


Rainbaby

by signifying_nothing



Category: K-pop, 방탄소년단 | Bangtan Boys | BTS
Genre: Fairy!AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-28
Updated: 2016-08-31
Packaged: 2018-05-29 16:45:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 35,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6384439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/signifying_nothing/pseuds/signifying_nothing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>that au where yoongi is actually a fae war prince<br/>and really was found under a bridge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. spirited away

**Author's Note:**

> this. is gonna be a long one and i'm gonna try my damnedest to finish bc god i love it

Mostly, Yoongi just figured he was really fucking lucky, that's all. Real lucky. His parents adored him all through his childhood, loved him enough to be firm and strict when he entered his “rebellious teenager” phase. They were affectionate as they supported his decisions to study music all through school instead of forcing him into after-hour cram sessions. They let him have his space and he didn't have to argue with them, they could always talk. Some of his friends weren't so lucky to have a family like his, and he was more than willing to share (did share, all of his friends called his mother _mom,_ and they were all her children,) but his good luck didn't end there.

If he did something bad, he never got caught. He won in bets and on lottery tickets, always found his wallet or keys before they'd been missing for too long. Found money on the street, his favorite clothes when he wanted them, never forgot to grab new shampoo when he'd run out. He was just _lucky,_ and his life was better for it.

His life was good.

“Yoongiyah,” his mother said softly on one dark, moonless night in March. “I need to talk to you.”

“Yeah Ma,” he said, sliding into a kitchen chair. He'd been intending to go out with his friends—it was his eighteenth birthday, but it wasn't quite time for him to leave yet. “What's up? I promise I already arranged for cab to bring me home later.”

“It's not that, Yoongiyah,” she laughed, reaching to tuck back a lock of his messy black hair. She looked at him with such affection, such desperate love, that Yoongi felt his chest tighten.

“Ma?” he asked, feeling fear creep up his veins. “Ma, what's wrong?”

“Nothing, sweetheart,” she said. “I'm just... I'm glad you were born. And I'm glad you're mine, my little rainbaby.”

“ _Ma_ ,” he complained, but went into her arms when she pulled him in and kissed his hair, smoothed her hands down his back and up his arms.

“I love you, sweetheart,” she said, and Yoongi blushed to hear it, like he always did.

“Love you more, Ma. Tell Dad I'll see him in the morning, okay?”

“Of course,” she nodded, and somehow Yoongi felt guilty for leaving the house. She stood in the doorway, watched him go down the road to where his friends were meeting him. The necklace she'd given him, the one he'd been wearing since he was nearly an infant, felt heavy around his neck: a pendant made of silver with a single, perfect moonstone settled in the middle.

~

Something was wrong.

They'd been walking along the river, Yoongi and his friends—laughing, throwing stones into the water. They'd been walking along the river under the streetlights but somehow the darkness had crept in unnoticed and now it was pitch-black, the outline of the mountains only barely visible, the sky blacker than Yoongi had ever seen it, and he was alone. Yoongi was alone. “Inwan?” he called, turning around to stare out into the heavy shadows. “Sangsun?”

The silence was unnatural. Yoongi felt the sweat on his neck from running down the streets getting cold, glanced around nervously before turning to head back the way he came (he thought?) hoping to get back to the lights of Daegu's nightlife instead of the quiet murmur of the river and the unfamiliar, alien depth of the sky. Where were the stars?

“Yoongi.”

He stopped, took in a sharp breath. That was not one of his friends. “Who's there?”

“It's time.”

“What? Who's there, what—what's going on? Who are you?” Yoongi heard rustling like wind through trees, the scrape of boot heel to stone, and god, _god_ his heart was beating so fucking fast it hurt.

“It's time,” the voice said again, so much closer and Yoongi jerked around, staggered back and stared into nothing but silver-black shadow and a pair of soft, soft blue eyes. “To come home.”

“What?” he asked, took another step back and ended up pressed to a body, taller than his own, broader, and something soft covered his mouth. Something soft and sweetly scented and he started to fall, unconscious before his knees hit the ground.

~

He woke again, head muddled and eyes squinting, in filtered sunlight. He groaned and rolled over, pulled his arm over his face and wondered how long he had before his mom came in and told him he had to get up. It was Saturday, it wasn't fair, he should be _allowed_ to sleep in the day after his birthday, damn it all.

Then he registered that he was moving. That there were shadows passing through the sunlight, causing his arm to flash between hot and cool, and he sat up so fast he made himself dizzy. He could hear—he heard rhythm, something... Trotting? Horses? He'd seen horses once, on a field trip. His friends had laughed and then cooed in awe when he rubbed the nose of one huge stallion with a patchy face and one blind eye, who lipped at his shirt and hair, nearly a million times his size. It should have been scary, but Yoongi had never really been scared of that kind of thing. Animals. Animals weren't scary.

He pushed up, confused by the texture of whatever it was he was laying on. _One thing at a time,_ he reminded himself, pushing up the... Canopy? The canopy of the... bed. He was on. The moving bed. He pushed it up just enough to see what was outside, squinted out into the sunlight, and felt his heart stop in his chest.

He was not in Daegu.

Or anywhere _near_ Daegu. Everything was so saturated, so bright and thick with color; the air smelled like the inside of a greenhouse, thick and tart and mossy and Yoongi—Yoongi was scared to death.

He was in a cart of some kind, buried under what looked like gigantic, pale pink _petals_ of all things. He was still wearing his clothes from the night before and in a panic he laid back down, scrambled for his phone in his back pocket. It wouldn't even power on. It wouldn't even _power on_ and Yoongi fought to calm down, to control his breathing. It didn't seem like his kidnappers knew he was awake yet.

 _Okay,_ he told himself. _Okay. Here's what we're gonna do, all right Yoongi, we're gonna jump the fuck out of this cart, we're gonna run in a straight line for as long as we can and we're gonna get the fuck out of this over the rainbow bullshit because mom is gonna be **so** freaked out and we really need to get home and we don't want to get cut to pieces by a bunch of psychopath kidnappers._

With a nod to confirm his plan, Yoongi shoved his phone back into his pocket and wiggled to the edge of the cart. He counted down to himself, slow, and on _one,_ he threw himself out of the cart and took off running. There was shouting behind him, commotion, but he just kept running. The road was dirt, uneven and slippery and he had to fight to stay on track but there was the sound of hooves, _horses?_ and he veered off to one side, into the trees and thick ferns. Yoongi didn't know much about running through the forest but he did know a lot about getting away from someone chasing you, and the principles of running away from cars probably applied to running away from horses, right?

Except that trees had branches and roots, and Yoongi found himself tripping, falling, staggering every which way to escape whoever was chasing him. He caught the whip of a branch to the face, gasping in pain but he didn't stop to think about how the fuck that had happened. He ran until he was out of breath, threw himself under a particularly large bushel of ferns and laid there, hands covering his mouth as he panted as quietly as he could. He knew now why all those people covered their mouths in horror movies—his breathing sounded, to him, like the loudest signal in the world, _here I am, come murder me!_

But after a few minutes there was still silence, and his breath was coming easier, and he carefully looked up and around. The forest was all shades of green, lush and thick around him. He couldn't see the sun; it was blocked by leaves and flowers and the canopy and it was... It was beautiful, now that he was able to actually look at it, but...

“Where the fuck am I,” he wondered, glancing around and staring out over the place. He had no idea where he was. None at all. Pushing up from the ground, he sat up and looked over the crowns of the ferns. There was no visible path, no direction he could... Assume was good to go in, so he stood up and, after a moment, turned towards where the light from the canopy was brightest. That was where he'd go. Towards the sun.

He tried again, to get his phone to work. Searched his pockets and found only a pack of gum, a pack of cigarettes, his lighter, the change from the money he'd spent on dinner, and the napkin with the cute waitresses phone number on it.

In short, nothing useful. Well. Maybe the cigarettes were useful. Yoongi was grateful for the one-short-of-a-full pack, pulling out a stick and holding it between his lips, lighting it and walking. He didn't trip nearly as much as he had while running away, was careful to hold branches out of his face and he tried not to be too noisy, in case people were still hunting for him. He was covered in bruises from falling all over the place, the cut on his face stung, but there wasn't anything to be done about it so he tried not to itch at his cheek. He didn't want to infect it or something.

The silence was unnerving. He didn't like it, so Yoongi started to hum and then to sing under his breath, old folk songs about faeries and the dead and anything else his mother used to tell him at bedtime, just desperate to keep some sound in his presence. There weren't even birds chirping, no insects buzzing. He couldn't see anything but silent, muffled green as far as he could see.

When he finished his cigarette, Yoongi stopped walking and licked his fingers, crushing out the last of the smocking tobacco before he paused. He could throw it on the ground but that felt... Wrong. So he shoved the filter into his pocket, lit another, and kept walking.

Yoongi walked until he was too dizzy to walk. He was hungry, tired and frankly, fucking scared, so he found a comfortable hollow between the roots of a truly massive tree and sat down. He crossed his legs and let his hands rest on his thighs as he took stock of the situation.

He'd been out celebrating his birthday with Inwan and Sangsun. He'd... Been drugged or something, how else could the city have been that dark, and then he'd been drugged _again_ and kidnapped. Now he was in some weird forest that didn't look like anywhere he'd ever seen (not in a book or in person) and he was hungry and thirsty, dizzy with it, fingers shaking but maybe that was the nicotine.

Yoongi knocked his head back into the bark with a sound of exhausted frustration. “I want to go _home,_ ” he said to no one, sounding pathetic to even himself. If he was the type to cry he'd have been crying but he wasn't, so he just growled and rubbed his hands over his face, pulled at his hair.

“Where's home?” a voice chirped, and Yoongi threw himself backwards, slamming his head into the tree with a loud curse, jerking forward to cup the back of his head and glare out into the green.

There was a boy standing there. Man. Teenager or something. He was tall, thin and had a wild fall of green and brown hair, dark eyes and skin like tainted gold. He even shimmered a little and Yoongi wondered how long it had been since he'd eaten anything. How long did it take a person to start hallucinating from hunger?

 _Maybe I'm still drugged,_ Yoongi thought as he pressed back into the tree and swallowed. “Who the fuck are you?”

“Me?” The young man asked, cocking his head and looking from side to side. “Or them?”

“What? You, there's no one else here.”

The young man cocked his head at a truly disturbing angle. Yoongi couldn't look away. It was horrifying, like something out of a movie, the way the boy's head straightened back up and he looked down at Yoongi, very seriously, and spoke slowly.

“Just because you can't see them, doesn't mean they aren't there.”

“...Right,” Yoongi replied, wishing he had a knife. Or... A really big stick. He was absolutely defenseless as the weird boy walked closer, too close for his comfort. “Stop right there,” he said, wishing he had the strength to get up. “Don't come any closer. Don't.”

“Of course,” the young man held still and blinked. “As you command. But you really can't see them, can you.” His smile seemed mournful, his eyes darkening with sadness Yoongi had no hope of understanding. “You've been gone for so long you can't see them anymore.”

“See what,” Yoongi asked, heart pounding so hard it hurt his chest. “See _who._ ”

“The pixies,” the young man said, sitting down where Yoongi had demanded he stop, crossing his legs. “Your people.”

“What?”

“He said you'd be disoriented, he said you'd be confused, but he didn't...” the boy trailed off, chewing at his lip. “He didn't say you'd lost the Sight.”

“What the _fuck_ are you talking about?” Yoongi hissed, feeling the shadows creeping in like rope or walls, closing him in, trapped between the V of the roots he was sitting in and the boy six feet away, with wild brown and green hair and skin the color of upturned earth. “What is going on, where the hell _am I?_ ”

“You're in the world inside the world,” the boy said. “Where you came from. Why don't you remember? The Mistman's Wood. The Unseelie Court.”

“ _What?_ ” Yoongi was so confused. And so tired, god, his head was spinning and his vision was starting to blur and he was seeing speckles of light drifting back and forth through his vision, tiny pinpricks of LED-bright dancing in midair. The pendant around his neck felt like it weighed a hundred pounds and it was hard to keep his head up. “What are you... Even talking about, what. I want to go _home,_ where is this, am I still in Korea? I want—I want to go home, I want my _mom—”_

Yoongi felt himself starting to tear up and bit viciously at his lips, pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes. God, his mom must be so fucking worried. How long had he been gone? Had Inwan and Sangsun gone to her, told her what happened, had they filed a police report when he'd disappeared into the unnatural darkness that night, spirited away by some fucking stranger with a chloroform rag? Was she crying?

Yoongi didn't want to be a kid. He'd always been in such a rush to grow up and be independent, responsible, so he could take care of his parents, but at that moment he felt like a very small child lost in a department store, left behind and god, _god_ he wanted his mom.

“You should rest. You've been running for a long time, so you should really just rest,” the boy's voice came. Yoongi didn't want to rest. He didn't want to relax but the young man's voice was soft and soothing, and he felt a hand smoothing down his hair and hands under his arms. He felt himself being lifted against a chest like a kid and he couldn't open his eyes, he was just... So sleepy...

“Good job, Taehyung,” came a gentle voice from beneath where Yoongi's head lay on a warm shoulder. “We need to get him home.”

“Is he gonna be okay?” Taehyung asked, anxious. “He can't see them. He doesn't have the sight anymore. He might never get it back, what if he doesn't get it back—m?”

“We'll have to deal with that when the time comes.”

Yoongi was near asleep, but he had the errant thought as he drifted off that he was getting really sick of being carried away to who knew where by complete strangers.

~

Yoongi rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and sat up. He couldn't mistake himself for being home that time; the room was far too bright, smelled sweet and the sheets were too soft. He rubbed at his eyes and squinted around the room, trying to discern where he was.

Was his vision getting worse? He felt like he could hardly see anything beyond the edge of the large bed, and he carefully got up, felt down his pockets for his pack of cigarettes and his lighter. The room was large, airy and the ceiling appeared to be made of canopy like the forest the day before, all shades of green with the occasional slice of yellow sunshine coming through. He lit the cigarette and made his way to a window, staring out into the blurry distance. The wash of color was bright and amazing, something he would have wanted to photograph if his phone would work, if he'd had his camera. What had the guy yesterday called this place? The _Mistman's Wood._ The name was familiar, now that Yoongi was thinking about it. There was something distinctly raw to it, a memory he couldn't place.

“You're awake,” came a voice, and Yoongi turned to stare in the direction it had come from. He could see a form there, blurry though it was, and he blinked at the flicker of color behind it, bold red and orange. “We weren't sure... How are you?”

“What's going on,” Yoongi asked, tired of asking questions. “Where am I? I want to go home.”

“You are home,” the young man said, his voice tender. “This is your home. Your real home.”

“Bullshit,” Yoongi hissed, nearly vibrating with sudden and all encompassing agitation; he wasn't _home,_ he knew where his home was and this was _not_ it. Home was the apartment in Daegu, the smell of his mother's perfume and the strong coffee his dad drank, his soft-with-age sheets and the hum of his window fan. Home was there. This was... This was not it.

The form set down something on a table, stepped back. “You should eat. You've been nearly three days without a meal.”

“Fuck you,” Yoongi hissed, wishing his vision wasn't so fucking _blurry,_ he'd stalk the fuck over there and punch whoever that was in the fucking mouth. “Fuck you, get out, get _away_ from me.”

“As you wish,” the man said, and Yoongi saw a door open then close; shit. Shit, he was exhausted and hungry and his eyes...

He found his way back to the bed and collapsed back into it. He'd sleep. He'd sleep for the next day and maybe when he woke up all of this would be some fucking weird, stupid, nonsensical dream he could laugh about with his friends, the result of too much drinking and not enough food beforehand.

This was a dream.

This was all a dream.

All Yoongi could hear was the slow, whispering fall of rain.

~

The rain came down like needles.

Beneath the bridge, a child cried. Wailed and wept loudly, wrapped in green and brown, a fall of white hair brushing red cheeks, toothless mouth wide open in screaming distress. Ignored. The child was ignored and forgotten until a woman, a human woman, came and gathered him into her arms, cooing softly, holding her umbrella to keep him safe from the rain.

“Shh,” she murmured, kissing his tiny head, unable to see the bleed of white hair to black, the change of blue eyes to brown. “Shh it's all right, it's all right little rainbaby. You're all right now.”

The glamour settled into the child's skin, and any trace of magic was wiped into non-existence with the rainwater the woman wicked away with her warm, human hands.

 


	2. the oberon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which yoongi meets the oberon, and has a complete mental breakdown.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so much exposition, aish @_@

Yoongi hated the rain. For as long as he could remember he hated it. He hated dark grey clouds and the sound of rain on windows. Hated puddles and cold water and his mother, bless her, never tried to make him go out in it. When he was still little enough to be pulled into her lap on rainy days, she would smooth his hair and sing while he sucked his thumb with his face buried in her neck, one little fist tight in her shirt. Her rocking chair swayed and her voice made up songs about her tiny rainbaby who loved the sun and the flowers and the cloudless sky, _rain, rain, go away..._

_Rain, rain, go away..._

_Rain, rain..._

_Rain..._

~

“Mom?”

Yoongi groaned and sat up, rubbing hard at his eyes. Shit, that was some dream. He squinted out into the bedroom and climbed up out of the bed, stretching over his head. “Mom?” he called again, grabbing for his glasses and pushing them up his face. Shoving his hair back, yanking a beanie on, he headed out towards the kitchen, where he could smell coffee, his mothers perfume. _Flowerbomb._ He'd bought it for her birthday last year. The first real gift he'd ever been able to get her.

“Rainbaby,” she cooed, and Yoongi felt a swell of relief as he walked to her, buried himself in her arms. God, what a fucking terrible dream. “Are you okay? You came in really late.”

“Yeah,” he said, eyes closed as she rocked him back and forth. “Yeah Ma, m'okay. Just... Had a really weird dream.”

“Oh?” she asked, and Yoongi nodded. “About what?”

“I dunno,” he said, frowning a little. Something... Wasn't right, but he wasn't sure of it. What it was, what caused it. “I got kidnapped... There was this kid in a forest, and little flashing lights, n'a bed made of... I dunno, flower petals or something. It was really weird.”

“Sounds it,” she said, and Yoongi frowned. “Well. It was just a dream, sweetheart.”

“Yeah,” he nodded, carefully pulling away. “Yeah, you're right.”

“Why don't you go get dressed, mm? I'll finish breakfast.”

“Okay.”

Yoongi walked down the hallway to the bathroom. He turned on the hot water and made sure he had all of his things ready, towel on the rack, toothbrush on the sink, before looking at himself in the mirror.

Behind his glasses, his eyes were a clear, bellflower blue.

“Wh...” He pushed his glasses up fast enough, hard enough, that his hat fell off and the hair that fell into his face was white, not black. Not even that ill-advised green he'd done once. White like lilies. “Holy shit—”

“Yoongi? Are you all right?”

“Mom,” he said, staggering back into the door. It shattered beneath his weight. “Mom!”

The world was melting. Yoongi was choking on air as he fought his way through the mess to the kitchen, where his mother was just looking down the hallway in confusion while the world fell apart around her. “Mom! Mom look out, _Mom—_ ”

The sound of a storm, heavy and booming, and his mother ran to color like a soaked painting, washed away to nothing while Yoongi tore at his rose-white hair and screamed and screamed and screamed.

~

“ _Wake up!”_

Yoongi gasped for air as he jerked upward and slammed into a torso. Hands clawed he tried to push away and hold on at the same time, choking for air, sobbing like a child, a baby caught out in the rain. The body he was clinging to was broad and warm, arms wrapped around his chest as he cried for what felt like hours, until he had no more tears, just the hiccups in his lungs.

“Shh,” the man was saying. “Shh, it's all right, it was just a dream. It's all right.” Big hands rubbed at his back and Yoongi... Yoongi had his face buried in soft material and the nightmare had been awful, and he was scared, it hadn't been a dream, he was here, wherever here was, and he just wanted to go home.

“I wanna go home,” he sobbed, and the body he was resting against—Yoongi felt a nod, felt a cheek in his hair.

“I know,” the soft voice said. “I know, I know, I'm sorry. It was done all wrong. You weren't meant to be taken that way, I'm sorry Yoongi. It wasn't meant to happen this way.”

He gave himself another few minutes of pathetic sniffling before he pushed up and rubbed at his eyes, hating how they kept watering, hating how he kept seeing his mom melting away to nothing before his eyes. Everything seemed to take so much effort—reaching to wipe his cheeks, push back his hair... His lily-white hair.

“What's happening to me,” he whispered, and the man in front of him pursed his lips together.

“The magic is coming back to you.”

“I don't understand,” he said. “I want to go home.”

“Yoongi... Yoongi, I'm sorry, but... But you can't.”

“I want my mom.”

The man flinched terribly, and there was a flutter of color behind him. It took Yoongi a moment to realize that it was a pair of wings, flitting up and down the way a cat would swat it's tail. “Yoongi... Please, you don't, you can't go back right now. You can't. You don't belong there, it's already... Re-shaping itself without you.”

“What does that mean.”

Yoongi felt hollow. He was hearing the words but they didn't mean anything, not really. Didn't belong? Re-shaping? All of those words meant nothing to him. _Can't go back._ Why?

“It's com—” the man stopped speaking, his hands still rubbing up and down Yoongi's back when the door opened. There was a moment of electric silence. Yoongi didn't look up from the man's shoulder. There were lights dancing in his vision, little bright sparkles drifting close to his face. “Stop that,” the man said, waving his hand. “Give him some space, would you.”

“Your Grace,” came a voice from beside the bed. Yoongi turned his head to see the boy from the forest, his eyes solemn. “Your presence is requested.”

“He's in no fit state to go anywhere, Taehyung—”

“His majesty commands,” Taehyung said, and the man in front of him bared his teeth. Tension started to string like wire across the room and Yoongi wondered what the fuck kind of fantasy novel he'd fallen into. His Majesty? Wings? This was all _fucking ridiculous._

“Tell him I will bring him when he's ready and no sooner.”

“As you wish, Seokjin.”

Taehyung moved away from the bed, and the bright little lights followed after him, save one; one tiny pink light settled on Yoongi's shoulder and stayed there, humming a tune. Lights couldn't hum. Yoongi wished he was awake.

“Come on, Yoongi, you have to get up.”

“Why,” he asked, finally looking up into the man's face. He was beautiful, stunningly so. His eyes were round and dark, his lips soft and pink. His fall of brown hair was elegantly tousled, and the circlet of tiny pink and cream flowers in his hair added to how... Ethereal he looked. Otherworldly. Faerie-like. _Fucking ridiculous._

“Because if you don't, we're all very much in trouble.”

“Why do I care?” Yoongi asked, and the man pursed his lips again. Yoongi could have felt guilty, in another place and time. “What does it matter to me?”

“Yoongi,” the man said. “Yoongi, please, I know... I know it's all wrong right now, I'm sorry, but we need you, please, can't you pretend to play a part for just a little while until we... Until we can make up for how you've been wronged? Please? We need you. I swear, I'll—I'll do what I can to make sure you can return home, I promise, I swear on my wings but we need you now, we _need you._ ”

Yoongi weighed his options. He could say no. He could stay in this bed, useless and weak and tired and wishing he was dreaming. Or he could fucking help himself. Get up, play a part. Go home, maybe, when it was over. The man's face was flushed with embarrassment or maybe just upset. Yoongi stared at him for a moment longer and thought about the paintings he'd seen in art history of renaissance faeries and thought to himself that they were pretty inaccurate. The man... The faerie. In front of him was much prettier than any painting.

Yoongi forced himself to sit up a little straighter, no matter how much it seemed to be more effort than he could spare. The storm in of him was ripping his insides apart, but he couldn't make it leave. Not through his lips, his eyes, or the fists of his hands.

~

He was wearing the same clothes he'd been wearing for three days. Four. However long.

He was wearing those clothes, that hoodie and those jeans, but on his head was a circlet of thorns and roses such a dark plum they were nearly black. In one hand was a halberd, it's blade sharp and heavy. The weight of it was comfortable in Yoongi's hand, almost like holding a javelin, and he took a little comfort in that as people moved about, darted and spoke and he stayed still, trapped in the middle.

“Yoongi,” came that voice again, the man from the forest. Taehyung. He didn't have wings, not like the man from earlier. Yoongi turned to look at him, and the man flinched terribly. “My Lord. Are you ready?”

“For what,” Yoongi asked, trying to remember to respond. Just because he felt like he was floating off in space, like he wasn't attached to his body, didn't mean he could act like it. _Keep it the fuck together, man. Just until we get home. Just until we get home._

“This,” Taehyung replied, carefully reaching to tug this way and that at his clothes to neaten them. Yoongi took a moment to wonder if this was how a rich kid felt when something he hadn't noticed before finally clicked in his brain.

“Wait. Lord?”Taehyung paused and looked up at him, flinching again. “What do you mean, Lord,” Yoongi asked, voice hard.

“Just what I say,” Taehyung said. “You are the first born prince of the Mistman's Wood. You are... Our Lord. _My_ Lord.”

“This is fucking ridiculous,” Yoongi hissed, eyes narrowed as Taehyung ducked his head and said nothing else. He finished tugging and pinching the clothes and moved away, eyes downcast. Yoongi thought he should probably feel bad, but he didn't. He wanted to go _ho—_

The towering doors at the other end of the room burst open and Yoongi, had he not been so determined to be stern and stoic and furious, would have been afraid.

The crack of the doors hitting the walls was bad enough. But what came through the doors... A huge crowd of revelers, all dressed in festive, bright colors and more of those floating lights. Banners and flags, bottles of wine and raucous laughter and at the head of it all a man, a man with wings like a Jackson Pollock painting, skin smeared in paint like the festival of colors as the crowd made their way in and stopped in stunned silence not fifteen feet away from where Yoongi stood, halberd in hand, with Seokjin behind him, a hand on his back to keep him steady. Suddenly it was as though the room were plunged into winter, cold and mist crept along the stones at their feet. “His Majesty, the Oberon,” Seokjin whispered, and Yoongi swallowed, thinking back to literature classes. Oberon? Like... Midsummer night? He supposed he could see that, as the man strode forward until they were arms length apart and one hand reached out to touch Yoongi's face.

He slapped it away more out of instinct than anything else, mouth tight and eyes hard. The man—The Oberon—burst into laughter.

“Aah, you're exactly what I knew you'd be, little prince,” he said, and the silence broke into tittering laughter and chatter. The frightening aura, the creeping dread, was gone. Now, it felt a bit like Yoongi was standing in the middle of a houseparty being a sober killjoy while the leader of the frat attempted to get him to enjoy himself. “Look at you. All grown up now. And so stern! So fitting for a War Prince.”

“What?” Yoongi said, and the Oberon motioned to the halberd.

“You carry a weapon befitting your station, do you not? You're certainly fearsome enough to be a War Prince. And this _crown,_ ” the man touched it, or tried to. Yoongi jerked back and Seokjin's hand on his shoulder was all that kept him from lashing out. “Such a serious monster you are.”

“Don't touch me.”

“Aah,” the Oberon grinned, and Yoongi bared his teeth. “What a savage. Did the humans do that to you, after you were left out in the rain? Did that _woman_ turn you into this beast, tell me, or did you manage to become so on your own?”

Perhaps it was the way he'd said _woman._ Yoongi wasn't sure. He wasn't sure but the halberd led his motions as he lunged and spun the staff of it. The Oberon leapt back and drew a sword, the hook of the halberd caught on the blade and again, the silence.

“How _dare_ you,” Yoongi snarled, and the Oberon cocked his head in curiosity, sliding the blades together, leaning down where Yoongi was in a position to thrust the halberd and probably do a lot of physical damage. He didn't seem concerned and Yoongi hated him. He didn't know who he was, what he was, but he _hated_ him.

“Aah, so sensitive. Do you miss her, your substitute mother? I suppose all small boys do but remember this, War Prince. I am your King.” The halberd was flung up, and the blade of the sword was at Yoongi's throat before he could think to move. His hands were still on his weapon, and the staff came down hard on the Oberon's shoulder. Had he been six inches further back, the blade would have cleaved into his shoulder. “I am your King, and you will respect me.”

Yoongi hated very few things. He hated cold noodles, he hated the little bones in fish. He hated math. But more than anything he hated authority, hated when authority was flaunted in his face like something he had to yield to just because someone else said so.

He spat in the Oberon's face. He watched saliva slide down the man's cheek, watched his eyes turn to flint and didn't care. Fuck it. _Fuck it._ “I am a War Prince,” he said, and his voice felt harder than it ever had before, stones rolling down wood. “I will respect you when you earn it. And,” he jerked back on the halberd, felt the bottom tip of the axe blade catch on the Oberon's armor. The weapon, the man, was not familiar but the threat was. He spoke it with frightening ease and knew it was true, because it always had been. “If you speak badly of my mother again, I will _kill you.”_

Another moment of tense silence, and the Oberon stood straight, smirking. “Yes,” he replied. “Yes, I suppose you'll do, War Prince. That's settled then. Make ready the festivities,” his voice boomed through the room. “Our War Prince has returned!”

The thunderous roar that went up through the large chamber made Yoongi's head hurt. Seokjin's shaking hands on his shoulders gave no reassurance.

~

Yoongi finally staggered on the way back to the room he'd been staying in. His vision was blurring and he felt entirely too light, like he'd been running on adrenaline and now that he'd run out, he was floating away. Seokjin barely caught him, called for someone who came running down the hall. Red and orange, Yoongi remembered. Wings.

“Help me,” Seokjin panted, and Yoongi felt himself being lifted by a pair of strong arms. “He needs to be undressed. Bathed, fed.”

“I'll take care of it,” the man said. His voice was sweet and high. “You have other things to do, Sir, please. Let me take care of him for now.”

“Of course,” Seokjin sighed. “Thank you. I'll be by later, Jimin, be... Be careful.”

“I will,” he chirped, and Yoongi wanted to punch something. How could anyone sound so fucking... Cheerful. Shit. He was carried into the room and then into a second room, where tiny lights glowed across the arches of stone. “All right, I'm going to put you down. Get you undressed and cleaned up, mm? I bet it'll be nice to get out of these... Clothes? These are clothes, aren't they?” The young man's voice was conversational, even though Yoongi was content to ignore him. He didn't feel like talking. He was so confused, and upset, and furious, even though he wasn't sure of why.

“I didn't realize humans wore such strange things... Oh, that's _bizarre,_ ” Jimin said, pulling down the zipper on Yoongi's hoodie, pushing it off his shoulders. Yoongi sat on the rounded edge of... Whatever he was sitting on, and stared somewhere over Jimin's shoulder, occasionally catching a glance of his fire-colored wings. “I'm so glad you're here,” he continued, pulling the shirt up over Yoongi's head, his lank hair. “Everyone was so worried the Oberon would reject you. He's been so furious, after all... The ones he sent out to find you, they've been looking for a baby all this time. A _baby._ As though you haven't aged at all in the last eighteen years! Ridiculous.”

Jimin was very good at talking. Or perhaps Yoongi was just so far beyond caring, because it seemed as though suddenly, magically, he was nude and being lowered into a tub of hot water, everything smelling like—like—

“Sir?”

Flowerbomb perfume. The first real gift he'd been able to give her. Yoongi was crying.

“Sir, are you all right?”

She'd opened the package and her eyes had lit up and she'd peppered his face with kisses, _my rainbaby, oh sweetheart thank you, you're so good to me._ She hadn't asked him for anything, but _it made me think of you, Ma, so. You like it right?_ He remembered her grin, his own cheeky smile. The way she'd cradled the bottle in her hands like it was the most precious thing in the world. _That means you like it._

It was so hard to breathe. It was so hard to _breathe_ and Yoongi choked on air, clawed his fingers into Jimin's shoulder as the man grabbed him, presumably to keep him from slipping down into the water or to keep him from thrashing or who knew, who fucking knew and who _cared._

~

By the time Yoongi was through with his hysterics he was too tired to be alive. Jimin was feeding him... Something. Something vaguely sweet and flowery that didn't require any chewing. The faerie version of jello, Yoongi thought to himself. Jimin hadn't said a word since Yoongi had started crying like a child in the bathtub, but his hands were delicate, his hum soothing.

Yoongi let himself be laid down nude in soft sheets, closed his eyes and barely listened as Jimin finally said, “We've got a lot to do tomorrow, sir, so... So please get some rest, all right? Sleep well. May your dreams be peaceful.” Yoongi felt Jimin's lips press to his forehead and he might have fought it, if it didn't feel so much like a kiss his mother would have given. _Sleep now, my rainbaby. I love you._

“Night,” Yoongi mumbled, and Jimin gave a tiny, chuckling laugh.

“Goodnight, Sir.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> things to look forward to in the next chapter: hoseok, giant hornets, negotiations, and jimin being 9000% done.


	3. a broken glamour

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which hoseok is himself, jimin is 9000% done, and yoongi forgets.

When he was a kid, Yoongi thought he saw magic everywhere. In flowers blooming, in the sunlight through leaves. He thought he saw pixies, brownies, unicorns and kirins just inside the woods at the bottom of the mountains. Until he was about nine, Yoongi was so sure magic existed. He was so sure he could see it, feel it, touch it like a stream of water.

On a dreary day in September, all of that changed.

Yoongi had turned nine that year, and nine was the most magical number. His birthday was March 9th, 1993—3993—and there was nothing to stop him from believing that everything he said was true. There were unicorns behind the trees. There were faeries in the flowers of the rose garden. Yoongi believed in magic with all of his heart, until that dismal day in September, when the seed of doubt was planted and the magic inside of him started to die.

He'd gone down to the woods under his mother's watchful eye. She kissed his nose ( _my nose, you have my nose darling rainbaby_ ) and shooed him off, sitting on a bench nearby to watch him play. He ran about just outside the trees, counting flowers and playing make-believe under the grey sky. _Oh no,_ he'd said, cradling a little acorn, running over to his mother with it cupped in his hands. _Mama, mama you have to clap, or she's gonna die! You have to clap like in Peter Pan!_

His mother had smiled indulgently and clapped her hands together until Yoongi threw the acorn up into the air and laughed, darting back towards the trees and doing it again, and again, and again, until a bigger boy came over to where he was playing and shoved him out of the way.

 _There's no such thing as faeries,_ he'd grunted. _Only babies still believe that stupid stuff_ and Yoongi had opened his mouth to protest but. But the rain came down and something in him died. An acorn was not a faerie. There... There was no such thing as faeries.

Big boys didn't believe in faeries.

Yoongi ran to his mother, crowded up under her umbrella as she lifted him up into her arms. He'd always been a small child and he was grateful she still carried him as she walked them home and he cried into her shoulder. There was no such thing as faeries.

(still, that night under his covers with a flashlight Yoongi had grabbed his notebook and colored pencils and written over and over, _I do believe in faeries,_ because every time a child said they didn't believe in faeries, a faerie died, and Yoongi didn't want to kill anyone. He didn't want to kill a faerie.)

~

“Sir? Sir, wake up.”

“Mmm.” Yoongi groaned and twisted away, pulled the sheets up over his head and the voice broke into amused laughter. Someone tugged at the blankets. “Sir. Yoongi. War Prince to the Western Fae of the Mistman's Wood. Yoongi, wake up.”

“Go away,” he grumbled, irritated and irrationally hateful. War Prince. The Oberon. What bullshit, what... Fucking fantasy. “This is a fucking dream. There's no such thing as faeries.”

The grip on the sheet spasmed then went slack. There was a heavy _thump_ on the floor. Yoongi jerked up and squinted around, frowning at the empty room before the sound of haggard, hurried breathing caught his attention, the colorful, frantic flutter of wings.

The boy from yesterday laid on the floor, pale and choking, fingers clawed into the stone, wings jerking feebly and chest heaving for breath. His eyes were round with fear and one hand was around his throat and Yoongi took a moment to think about what was happening. It was an instant but it stretched forever before he realized what he'd done—what he'd _said—_ and threw himself from the bed wrapped only in the sheet. He dragged Jimin up, took in his wide and panicked eyes, the pallor of his skin, and did the first thing that came to mind.

He hugged him against his chest, thin hands on his back, raking through his hair as he spoke. “I do believe in faeries,” he said, his voice ragged and terrified. Oh god, he'd killed him, oh god, he— “I do believe in faeries, I do, I do believe in faeries—” Over the course of a few minutes Jimin's breathing evened out and his hands, small but strong, grabbed on to Yoongi's shoulders as he dragged in air, body finally calmed. Yoongi felt like he'd ripped the wings from a butterfly, like he'd cut the throat of a kitten as Jimin panted against his shoulder, clinging on even though he should have been shoving away, should have been... Doing anything but holding on to him like he thought Yoongi was going to run away.

“God I'm sorry, I'm sorry, are you okay, I didn't—shit I'm sorry, I didn't mean that, I swear I didn't—”

“M'fine,” Jimin said weakly, slumped against Yoongi, shivering. “M'all right.”

“ _God,_ ” Yoongi felt like he wanted to cry again, and Jimin murmuring assurances into his shoulder wasn't helping. Shit. Shit was kind of fucking monster was he?

_Such a serious monster you are. What a savage._

This had to stop. This had to fucking stop and Yoongi held Jimin at arms length, hated how warm his expression was, how trusting. This had to stop. “Sir?” Jimin asked quietly, and Yoongi fought not to flinch when the faerie's hand touched his face. “Sir. It was an accident.”

“I know what I said,” Yoongi ground out, and Jimin looked a little hurt, but not angry. He should have been angry, Yoongi wanted him to be angry. “I damn well know what I said.”

“You didn't mean it,” Jimin replied easily. “Otherwise I'd be dead on the floor right now.” Yoongi's hands loosened and Jimin's came up to hold them, his grip comforting. “Words have power, but only if there is feeling behind them. You didn't mean it. It's all right.

It's all right, Yoongi.”

Yoongi closed his eyes, and tried to remember his mother's face.

~

It took far longer than it should have, but eventually Jimin got Yoongi up, dragged him out of the bed and his self-hate. Got him dressed in _proper_ clothes that fit like a glove; leathers, boots, a tunic shirt with a neck-hole far too wide. It slipped from one shoulder, exposed the top of it beneath his vest but Yoongi figured if he didn't get out of bed—if he didn't at least pretend to do something, he was going to lose his mind completely.

His fingers toyed with his pendant as Jimin walked him down a long hallway and spoke nonsense about who was who and did what, having said something along the lines of, _you should know the people who are working with you._

“...and Taehyung is a shaman, though he also tends to stay close to the Greenland. You've already met Seokjin, of course, he makes sure things run smoothly here. Hoseok is our quartermaster, you'll meet him later today.”

“What about Oberon,” Yoongi asked, the memory of the halberd heavy in his hand.

“Oh,” Jimin pursed his lips. “He doesn't come here very often. He only came because he knew you were here. His business keeps to the Rosegully proper.”

“Rosegully?”

“The capital,” Jimin replied. “We're closer to the black forest here, since we're to the west.”

“I feel like I should be taking notes,” Yoongi said, and Jimin laughed. The sound was bright and comforting and Yoongi hated himself, the memory of Jimin's sweet face white with fear, his hand around his throat, choking on Yoongi's words. “What.”

“You don't need to,” he replied. “After all, you're going home when this is over, right? Back to the human world.”

“I can do that?” Yoongi asked, perking up almost immediately. It should have been embarrassing, how much his heart squeezed in that moment. “I can go home?”

“I... Believe so?” Jimin said, eyes wide. They were the softest brown and laced with green, Yoongi could see. All of them had brown eyes, like treebark or dark riverwater, touched with some beautiful brightness. “I don't see why you can't. You were brought here, so presumably... You can go back the way you came?”

The sparkle of hope made Yoongi's face relax, though it wasn't quite a smile. Jimin smiled at him though, shook his hair from his eyes. “This way. I want you to meet Hoseok.”

“Quartermaster. Right. What's he do?”

“He's in charge of the stables,” Jimin said, leading him down a set of stairs. Yoongi could hear people talking, walking. Assorted hustle and bustle. His... Kingdom. “Also the armory. He made your halberd especially for you. Didn't you wonder why it felt so natural in your hand, why you knew how to use it? It was crafted for you specifically. No one else can wield it.”

“What? How, when?”

“Oh, when you were very young. Before you were lost, he made that for you.”

“Lost? I was lost?”

“Yes,” Jimin pursed his lips together. “But I know very little of that. Namjoon would be able to tell you more.”

“Namjoon.”

“Our record-keeper, here at the Greenland. Seokjin will take you to meet him later, no doubt.”

Lost. Yoongi had been lost?

_I want to go home._

~

“So I made it specifically for you. Imagine my disappointment when the thrice-damned thing had to sit down here and _rot_ for eighteen years!”

“I,” Yoongi started, alarmed by the way the man in front of him was moving so fast around so much fire and sharp weaponry. “I'm sorry?”

“Bah! Don't be! Works like a charm though, right? Brings it right out of you, the fighting instinct. _And_ it comes when called. Have you tried it yet?”

“I don't know how,” Yoongi started, but Hoseok was already striding towards him, grabbing his wrist to pull him into a more open area than the middle of the smithy. “What—”

“Call it,” Hoseok said, his eyes bright with mirth and sly wisdom. “Call it to your hand. It's yours, it will come.”

“But I don't know how, what are you even talking about?”

“Oh come on, Yoongi,” Yoongi jerked at being called by his proper name, even as Jimin rolled his eyes on the other side of the room, a safe distance away from the fire-wielding madman that was the Quartermaster. “You're not even trying! Have a little _faith._ ”

“Faith,” Yoongi said, swallowing.

“Yeah, like. You know, when you know it's gonna be sunny once the rain is over. Have some faith! Call it to you. It's yours. Command it to come.”

Yoongi felt very foolish, standing there in those strange clothes with Hoseok braced behind him as though he expected Yoongi to fall over and hurt himself. Yoongi took a deep breath and closed his eyes. This was fantasy, he thought, faeries and all, so... Magic could be a thing too, right?

_I do believe in faeries._

His hand clenched tight around the staff of the halberd, and he sucked in a hard breath, staggering. It was there. It was there, in his hand. Magic. That had been _magic._

“It shrinks to the size of a regular axe, too,” Hoseok said, beaming with pride. “Just will it to be so. It will do as you command. It was made from you.”

“What?” Yoongi asked, shaking his hair out of his face and staring at the halberd, willing it to shrink.

“It was made with a lock of your hair, so no one will be able to pull out it's abilities but you. Your hair and a bit of blood.”

“I don't think I needed to know that,” he said, and Hoseok laughed.

“Don't worry too much about it,” he said, clapping Yoongi on the back as the halberd shrank in his hand. Magic. It was all fucking magic. “Worry about that when the time comes to make your armor. You're gonna need it, my great War Prince. But for now we need to find you a mount, so come on, to the stables with you!”

Jimin squawked as Hoseok shoved Yoongi down a hallway out towards the bright sun and greenery of the city proper, but Yoongi's head was somewhere else. War Prince. He was a War Prince. He was expected to lead these people in a battle. He was expected to _win._

Yoongi shivered and closed his eyes and remembered the sound of his mothers voice.

_My rainbaby, my sweet child. I love you._

~

“You _cannot_ be serious,” Jimin said, wings flared out, red and orange and yellow, bright and shimmering. Yoongi would have been stunned by the beauty, but he was too busy being stared down by a white-tipped hornet the size of a _car._ “Training a hornet is a serious task, he doesn't have that long—and besides that, I think you've scared him.”

“Scary? This baby girl?” Yoongi almost screamed as Hoseok walked right up to a _hornet the size of a car_ and rubbed at it's head, kissed the smooth shell of it's exoskeletal skull. “Nah. Lace is harmless! Sharp, on the other hand, is a _monster_ so don't go anywhere near _that_ pen,” Hoseok pointed to right where Yoongi was standing and Yoongi jerked forward, tripping, falling back into the hornet with wide eyes on the pen.

...Inside the pen was a wasp the side of a golden retriever, and Yoongi felt very, very dizzy for a moment before he realized that his back was resting against the giant hornet's head. He slid down the the floor, felt the scrape of the hornet's mandibles against his back, and then in his hair, where it seemed to... knead. Like a cat.

“She likes you!” Hoseok chirped, and Jimin rolled his eyes. Yoongi rather thought he needed to take a nap, or something.

~

“Ridiculous,” he was saying later, as he walked Yoongi through the garden. “Scaring you like that was mean. He knows you just got back, he shouldn't have done that—m”

“He was trying to help,” Yoongi interrupted, crouching beside a gathering of soft blue bellflowers, the color of his eyes. “He... I think he was trying to help. Acting like it was normal, and all.”

“And did it? Help?” Jimin crouched beside him, the shadow of his wings blocking Yoongi from the unbearably bright early afternoon sun.

“...I think so,” he said. “I still... None of this is real. None of it _feels real,_ but it is, so I... I guess I have to start treating it like normal, right? If I ever want to go home.”

“I suppose that's one way to think about it,” Jimin said, humming. “But the important thing is not to feel _rushed._ I know it's probably scary... All the expectations, and the... The idea that you have to be this indomitable war prince, but you're still just you, Yoongi. You're still you, too.”

“I don't feel like myself,” Yoongi replied, touching the flowers. “I'm... I'm a kid. From Daegu, in Korea, I don't understand any of this, I'm scared, I...” he trailed off, pressed his face down into his arms. “I want to go home. And I guess I'll. Do what I have to so I can.”

“That's a bit dour,” Jimin said softly. “Don't worry. We're here to help you. Me, Seokjin, Hoseok. We're here for you.”

“I know,” Yoongi said, and he knew it was true. He felt their support like a spiderweb at his back, making sure he didn't fall flat to the ground in his attempt to fly, wingless.

~

Yoongi threw himself into his role with cautious vigor. He woke early, ate with Seokjin. Trained with Hoseok (and Lace, who... Was growing on him.) He walked the grounds with Jimin and sometimes met Taehyung along the way. He didn't want to rot away in his room, that wasn't who he was, so he did his best to acclimate himself to the situation. Magic was a thing. He was surrounded by faeries. The floating balls of light were _pixies,_ tiny little sprites with smiles on their faces, who kissed his cheeks and braided his hair when they thought he wasn't looking.

He finally met Namjoon, walking to the library with a question on his mouth. He'd been writing things down; memories, places, things he wanted to remember when he left this place, but the question plagued him and he needed to know.

“How... Was I lost?”

Namjoon was tall and skinny, dark-skinned with wings and hair like cotton candy. He blinked up at Yoongi and nodded, motioning for him to sit down.

“There are lots of versions of that story, Yoongi,” he said. Yoongi had made it well known that he did _not_ want to be called War Prince or Your Majesty or My Lord outside of official business; it alienated him and made him feel singled out. He had a name: they would use it. “Although most of them agree that it was an accident. You simply... Decided you'd rather be somewhere else, and you went a little further than expected.”

“Is that something I can do?”

“Every fae child can do such a thing,” Namjoon nodded. “Just that, given the amount of power you possess, you... Moved yourself a lot farther than you meant to, and you ended up on the Otherside.”

“So it was an accident,” Yoongi said, and Namjoon nodded but also shrugged. “What do you think it was, Namjoon.”

Namjoon pursed his mouth and leaned back in the chair. He was stately and at the same time haggard. If Yoongi had to give him a stereotype it would be _hipster_ and the idea enforced itself as Namjoon put his chin in his hand and looked up at Yoongi from where he sat.

“I think you were kidnapped and moved to the human world on purpose.”

“Why?”

“For the same reason everyone else think you did it yourself. For the same reason you're War Prince. You're very powerful, Yoongi. It rolls off of you in waves, power. It must have manifested itself somehow in the human world, no glamour could hide it.”

“...I've always been really lucky,” Yoongi offered, and Namjoon nodded.

“Yes, that could be it. But you also haven't been aging. You've noticed, haven't you? It's been eighteen human summers, and you don't look a day past sixteen.”

“How do you know what sixteen year olds look like,” Yoongi frowned, crossing his arms defensively.

“I've done enough studying,” Namjoon laughed. “But you haven't been aging. The human glamour is fading from you. You look younger now, than you did when you came.”

“Human glamour?”

“Mm,” Namjoon nodded. “Look at a looking glass, Yoongi. Look at yourself and see if you can remember what you looked like, before you came here.”

~

Yoongi looked at himself in the mirror, long and hard. He stared and he could not remember what he appeared as before, before the sharp cut of his jaw, the white of his hair and the blue of his eyes. He couldn't remember anything but the slope of his nose. It seemed wrong, somehow.

_You have my nose, my rainbaby._

Yoongi gasped in fear when he realized he almost didn't recognize the memory of his mother's voice.

 


	4. neverland makes you forget.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the battle approaches.

 

_My mother's name is Min Jieun. She has black hair in a long braid and dark brown eyes. She wears Flowerbomb perfume. She's taller than me, but not for long, I don't think. But then again Namjoon said I stopped growing, so maybe she'll always be taller than me. Maybe I'll always be able to rest on her shoulder._

_She calls me rainbaby, because it was pouring on the day I was born. Or... I guess, on the day I was found._

_She's still my mother._

_Min Jieun is my mom._

_~_

Yoongi was tacking up Lace's harness when he realized that his fingernails were turning blue. Just at the root, a pale and pretty blue. They were strong and shining like glass, and he struggled to remember what they'd looked like before, what the human glamour had done to make him appear dull and mundane. He had trouble recalling now, the details he hadn't written down. He knew his skin had always been somewhat unusual, dewy and pale even when he spent his summers outside, and he'd never burned. He remembered that his hair had been black, and his nose had been different.

He stopped, settled his hand on Lace's hard shoulder and her wings flitted, her head knocking from side to side. It had been... Some time, since he'd come. He'd tried to keep track of the days but it grew to be tiresome, too much to keep track of. He knew it had been a long time. Too long. He knew that the world grew restless around him as he trained with Hoseok and Taehyung in combat and magic. Taehyung, especially, was thrilled with his progress. _Your words have so much power,_ he'd said, and Yoongi had shuddered to remember Jimin gasping on the floor, clawing at the stone and his throat, _there's no such thing as faeries_ and he'd almost killed him, no matter what Jimin said, no matter how reassuring his sweet, sweet words.

He'd almost killed him.

“Lace,” he said, and the hornet swung her antennae back and forth. “Can I tell you a secret.” She clacked her mandibles together and he laughed, moving around to be at her front. She'd terrified him, for the first few days. Then... He'd realized she had the same color as that horse he'd pet once, and he'd reached out his hands to cradle her head and she had all but vibrated, clearly pleased. Hoseok had watched from the sideline, grinning like a fool and Yoongi had felt his entire world shrink to her; she was his companion, his confidante, they were meant to be together like this in this place, at this time. He rather adored her and he told her so often. He told her all his secrets.

“I'm scared,” he whispered, and she looked up at him before taking a step forward to press her head into his chest. He bent to hug her as much as he could, mostly just resting on top of her head as she chewed at his shirt and let her body vibrate at a low frequency to calm his suddenly hammering heartbeat. “I'm scared, Lace. What if I can't do this? What if someone dies because of me?”

He'd addressed that fear with Seokjin, who had pursed his beautiful mouth and pushed back his dark hair. He was rather plain compared to Jimin, whose exuberance and gaiety showed in his coloring. Seokjin was reserved and a fair bit more cautious, though he seemed to love Yoongi no less. Seokjin had motioned him down into a nest of pillows near the fireplace after he'd caught Yoongi in the middle of a rather spectacular breakdown that included shattered glass and upturned furniture. He'd talked him down from irrational panic, laid him down and spooned up behind him, stroked his hair and murmured quietly that his fears were unfounded; their warriors were capable and fearsome and all Yoongi really had to do was be brave enough to stand beside them.

 _They want to believe in you,_ he'd assured, pressing a kiss to Yoongi's cheek. _So... Be someone they can believe in.That's what it means, to be a leader._

It wasn't that simple, but Yoongi had promised to try. He'd promised to try but in that moment, there had been something he wanted to ask Seokjin, something important about how... Something that had to do with how he'd come to be here in the Mistman's Wood, something... There was someone he was trying to remember, but could only recall when it rained.

~

Yoongi sat in the garden with his halberd in hand. The news had come that morning, that the Winter's Rest were finally marching in their direction. The battle was coming. He felt sick to his stomach, tense and helpless. He'd been training for this. In four days time he'd be leading an army onto a battlefield and with any luck most of them would make it out alive.

“Such a sour expression, War Prince,” came the Oberon's voice, and Yoongi didn't move, just stared out into the garden and breathed slow. Even. “Are you afraid.”

“Any sensible creature would be afraid,” Yoongi replied, voice sharp. The Oberon chuckled and Yoongi watched him sit in the leaves of an oversized honeysuckle. He no longer wore his festive, colorful robes but tight leather armor, like the set Hoseok was fashioning for Yoongi down in the smithy. His long, dark hair was not loose but tightly pulled back, it's braids and colored thread and beads restrained. The sides of his head were tightly shaved, the skin tattooed with runes. He looked more like a War Prince than Yoongi could ever hope to. “What do you want.”

“To speak to you,” he replied, leaning back. “I've been told there are questions you want answered. It is within my memory to answer them.”

“I don't remember having any questions for you,” he said, and the Oberon nodded.

“Of course you don't,” he said. “You're forgetting. Everything before now is as a dream, disappearing like mist in morning sunlight. But I remember. You wanted to know how you came to be lost, War Prince Min Yoongi, son of Min Jieun.”

Yoongi's gut gave a lurch at the name, _Min Jieun._ His... Mother. Faeries, he'd learned, didn't have any concept of mothers and fathers; they were born from flowers, dew, a ray of sunlight or a moonbeam. They simply _became,_ and were raised by the community at large. None of them had last names. _Min Jieun._

“How did I come to be lost,” he asked, voice rasping. The Oberon leaned forward and Yoongi could see that one of his eyes was blue, the other brown. His hands were scarred, tattooed and his armor creaked lightly, it's metal decorations clinking like a windchime. “How did I come to be lost, Oberon.”

The Oberon smiled, and Yoongi watched him tangle his fingers. “You were taken,” he replied simply. “From a cradle in the bellflowers you were born from. Stolen right out from under the city, though no one knows how, or by whom. We traced you to the edge of the black forest. That was where the magic disappeared.”

“Disappeared,” Yoongi repeated.

“Yes. The trace of you disappeared. It is as Namjoon believes, you... Moved yourself. Most likely the second you were conscious of what was happening, you moved yourself, though you... Went a bit far. To somewhere we could not chase you.”

“Namjoon said... There were people sent after me.”

“Once we'd realized what happened, of course. It's very difficult to organize our kind, you know this to be true. But for many years they searched for a baby. As though you wouldn't have aged in the human world.” The Oberon laughed in an exasperated sort of way. “They searched for a fae child, as though you would not have taken precautions to protect yourself.”

“Protect myself,” he said. He tried to remember. A human boy, tossing acorns, laughing in the shadows of trees. It all seemed so vague and far away.

“Yes. The magic in you, even when you don't know what to do, knows what to do. How else do you pick up on the combat training so swiftly? Hoseok nearly sings your praises when we meet. How else would you learn to use your words so sharp and deadly, so soft and calm, as Taehyung has trained you? How else would you have survived in the human world, if you hadn't taken a human form and that woman hadn't come to the sound of your voice?”

“Woman,” Yoongi frowned, his brow wrinkled as he tried to remember. “The woman, the human woman. Out in the rain, she...”

_Shh it's all right, it's all right little rainbaby. You're all right now._

“My mother,” Yoongi said, and the Oberon nodded.

“Your mother.”

“She's waiting for me,” he said, feeling panic welling up in his throat. His mother. His mother, his mother, Min Jieun. “My mother—my mom, she's back in the mortal realm, waiting for me. She doesn't know I'm gone.”

“Oh, I'd imagine she knows by now,” the Oberon said, and his voice was warm with pity. Yoongi bared his teeth. “Time passes much differently there, War Prince. Though by now, she may not recall who you are.”

“Not...” Yoongi was sitting down, but he staggered anyway—leaning back into the moss and trying to catch his breath, scrambling for the bag he carried on his hip to hold his journal, his enchanted writing implement ( _it will never run out of ink,_ jimin had said) and a few other things. He ripped the journal open to a new page, closing his eyes to remember. Time passed differently. She might not remember who he was. His mother might not know him.

Yes she would. She _would._ She was his _mother._

“I suppose you'll find out when this is all over, won't you,” the Oberon said, standing up slowly. “When you return there, to the mortal world. But keep in mind,” the Oberon turned to look down at Yoongi and his expression was curiously gentle. “Keep in mind. That once you are there and decide to stay, there is no coming back. And there is no forgetting.”

He disappeared into a shimmer of shadow and Yoongi was alone in the garden, hand clutching his chest, cheeks wet with tears.

~

Taehyung smiled as he stood beside Yoongi and watched him breathe life back into a dying flower. “You're so good at this,” he said, watching as the wilted, whiting petals turned back to a blush pink, the crumpled leaves turning supple. “You've got the tongue.”

“The tongue,” Yoongi asked with a laugh.

“The silver tongue. And a natural affinity for magic most couldn't even _hope_ to possess. No wonder you're picking up so fast.” Yoongi smiled in response, but couldn't help thinking those were dangerously close to the Oberon's words. “I wouldn't be surprised if you could heal someone just by singing at them, soon!”

“Can I kill someone this way, Taehyung?” he asked, and the hush that fell over the garden was a lead weight on his neck, like the pendant he still wore. A piece of polished moonstone, heavy around his throat. A memory.

“I... Suppose you could, yes. I've never tried it, that's... Not my area of expertise. Though I've read that War Princes have been able to do such things in the past.”

“I am a War Prince.”

“Yes, you are.” Taehyung's voice dropped and Yoongi turned to look at him, desperate to hear him take back that statement. He'd never agreed with him before. _I'm a War Prince,_ he would say, and Taehyung would laugh, _You're just Yoongi._

Somehow, the silence he got in response was worse than any painful, stinging words he could have been given. Taehyung must have seen it, the fear in his heart, because he knelt down beside him and took his hands, brought them up to his lips to kiss his knuckles, and did not say a word.

~

“You're pacing,” Seokjin observed, and Yoongi snarled, pushing a vase to the floor just to hear it break. Seokjin rolled his eyes and went to clean up the mess; at least the vase had been empty. Beautiful, but empty. “Stop that. Breaking things isn't going to help.”

“What is, then,” Yoongi hissed, desperate to—to _do_ something, anything, the longer he stood still the more irritated he became. The army was marching closer and they would meet them on the battlefield in two days time, but there was so much he still had to _do,_ there was so much he still had to learn and accomplish, he couldn't stop, he didn't have time to stop.

“Yoongi,” Seokjin's hands were soft on his neck and Yoongi bared his teeth. Seokjin just smiled down at him and kissed his forehead. “Yoongi. There are better ways to deal with this.”

“And what are those,” he snarled, genuinely surprised when Seokjin grabbed him by the waist and used his greater height and strength to shove Yoongi up against the wall, crowding him against it.

“You honestly don't know?”

Yoongi knew that faeries were free with their bodies and hearts. He'd walked in on Namjoon kissing Jimin against the wall of the library, their hands in one another's hair as Namjoon's wings fluttered and flared. He'd seen Jimin between Hoseok's legs in the stables, their hands laced tight together while Hoseok laughed and Jimin kissed the smile on his lips. He'd walked in to see Hoseok pinned between Seokjin and Taehyung and Taehyung... Taehyung, Yoongi had pressed himself against in the garden the day before, kissed with softness, desperate to prove to himself that he was more than the monster they wanted him to be, he was more than a War Prince, that he was still Yoongi, a boy, who was capable of gentleness. Of love.

He proved it again that night, beneath Seokjin. He held on to the base of his wings and whispered his praises, his love. _I love you,_ he'd said, and Seokjin had laughed, kissed his neck and lips. _You've very foolish,_ he'd replied, but Yoongi could do nothing but nod. Seokjin didn't understand love as Yoongi did, but he accepted the words for what they were, anyway. A promise.

_I will do my best. I will come back._

_~_

 

In the days before Yoongi left to make for the pass where his army would meet the fae of Winter's Rest, it was determined that Jimin and Namjoon would not join them on the battlefield. Jimin fought the decision with ferocity, protested and argued. Namjoon said nothing, just nodded and, when Yoongi came close, bent to kiss him softly on his mouth. “Win,” he'd said, and Yoongi had nodded.

Jimin, on the other hand, had refused to touch, look at, or speak to Yoongi for the entirety of the day. He was furious, his wings arched out wide with agitation, flared to make himself seem larger and more threatening.

“Jimin,” Yoongi said, having finally cornered him in a quiet part of the garden. He could have flown away if he wanted, but instead he turned to shove Yoongi hard, _get away from me,_ twice, _leave me alone,_ he tried for a third _how dare you,_ but was unable to muster the strength, collapsing to his knees with his head bowed. “Jimin,” Yoongi tried again.

“Why won't you let me go with you,” he asked, voice thick. “Namjoon... I understand, he's a scholar, not a warrior. I'm a fighter, you know I am, please, let me go with you,” he looked up and Yoongi felt his insides twist at the tears on his face, the desperation that marred his beautiful features. “Do not leave me here to wait for your return.”

“I need you here,” he said, easing down to kneel in front of Jimin, cupping his soft face in his hands. His heart was heavy in his chest, a weight he would carry with solemn reverence. “I need you here, Jimin, to make sure nothing happens.”

“Leave that to Seokjin,” Jimin almost shouted, one fist slamming hard into Yoongi's bicep. “That is his duty! It is mine to be by your side, Yoongi, it is my task to catch you if you f—” his voice choked and he fell forward and it struck Yoongi that this was real. This was true. He might die. He might die, and Jimin would be here, waiting for him. Taehyung, Seokjin, Namjoon and Hoseok. The army might never come back. He might never come back.

“I will not fall,” he said, pressing his cheek to Jimin's hair, shifting to drag the young faerie as close as he could, clutching him. “I will not fall, Jimin. I will come back to you.” _Have faith,_ Hoseok had said, and never in his life had Yoongi been so desperate for words to be true. “I will come back.”

“You don't know that,” Jimin whispered, and Yoongi felt hot tears on his neck, the twist of Jimin's mouth as he cried. “You don't _know that._ ”

“I will do everything in my power,” he replied. “Everything. I will come home.”

_I want to go home._

“Promise me,” Jimin said, pulling back just enough to look at Yoongi's face. “Promise me you will come to me when you return.”

“If you're not waiting for me at the gate,” Yoongi replied, holding Jimin's face in his fingers and kissing him sweetly. “I will come to you. I will come home, to you.”

_I am home._

~

“We're the bad guys, aren't we,” Yoongi murmured, and Hoseok stopped where he was pulling the straps on Yoongi's armor tight. “We're the ones humans tell their children to be afraid of.” It had occurred to him that morning when Jimin's hands, smeared with black paint, had moved across his eyes and mouth to create the grotesque, horror-show mask of a skull on his face. He looked terrifying and he'd known, then. “We're the bad guys.”

“We're enforcers,” Hoseok corrected, standing up straight. He was painted too, one half of his face black with a white smudge against his lips. “Someone has to keep the light in bounds. After all,” he had a wicked smile, like he was planning something awful and Yoongi took great comfort in knowing that perhaps Hoseok was just as much of a monster as he was. “What means a light, with no shadow to define it, War Prince. There is no light, without darkness.”

“Hoseok,” he whispered, one hand reaching out to grip the taller man's shoulder. “I am afraid.”

“Don't be afraid,” he replied, holding Yoongi's shoulder in return. “You have nothing to fear. You are the War Prince, the most powerful there's been in centuries. You have the Oberon. You have _us._ You have nothing to fear, Yoongi. Nothing. And when you return in glorious victory we will celebrate your ascension with such fierceness the entire world will know that the War Prince of the Mistman's Wood is a force to be reckoned with. That he led his army against impossible odds and _won._ ”

“Hoseok,” Yoongi whispered, eyes wide. Hoseok leaned closer, his eyes alight with fire that matched the orange tracing his iris.

“And when you return in glorious victory,” he said, his hands settling on Yoongi's small waist. “Your rewards will be great in both number and worth.”

“Hoseok,” he breathed, before his hands found their way into Hoseok's hair and yanked him in for a savage kiss, more tooth than lip. He'd never felt so very, very alive.

A storm gathered in the northern sky, but Yoongi could not hear the rain beneath the beat of Hoseok's heart.

 

 


	5. witness me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the battle ends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title and line stolen from mad max: fury road. i have nothing worth suing for, so please don't x_x

They met on the battlefield.

Yoongi stood beside Lace; the hornets and wasps would take the battle to the skies, kill the mounts of the enemies while the fae worked low to the ground. His hand trembled on her shoulder as she vibrated with agitation, snapping her mandibles in threat. At his back was Hoseok, Taehyung, warriors he'd never spoken to but knew the faces of. Some of them were little more than children, but there were no laws to prevent them from fighting. If they wanted to, they could. They were armored, they were painted, they looked just as fearsome as the eldest in the bunch. They held the great black flags, short swords, daggers and bows. They were just as ready to die.

Some of them were so young.

Yoongi wasn't good at public speaking. He never had been. But he turned to face his army, _his_ army, and spoke the words softly, let the wind carry them to every ear, let the spell for valor and strength weave into his words. “We are the balance,” he said. “We are all that stands between the Winter's Rest and a world of white. You are brave. Strong. Stand tall. I believe in you.”

_I believe in faeries._

He turned back to the field, the enemy line not so far away at all. He raised his halberd, felt it extend in his hand. The pull of his leathers, the paint on his face, the smell of the grass and the ghost of the blood that would be spilled.

The charge was deafening. Lace took to the sky and Yoongi raised his halberd.

~

There was so much color. So much color and for many moments, Yoongi didn't recognize the splashes of shimmering pink, green and violet for what they were. He didn't recognize it as blood, not really, until he saw it flowing out of a young warriors mouth while he gasped for air, his belly cut open, his guts trying to squeeze through the slice of skin.

Distantly, Yoongi knew it was going badly. He knew they were outnumbered, outclassed, knew that his people were dying. Every few moments he would come across a corpse and try not to notice their face. Was it Hoseok? Was it Taehyung? Would Lace come crashing down from the sky, spasming with poison, foaming at the mouth before she died, grounded and alone?

The wound in his side _throbbed_ but Yoongi knelt beside the bleeding youth and gripped his shoulder, pressed one hand over the oily, wet tissue and hissed through his teeth. Not this one. This one would not die. He would save as many as his power could spare. As many as he could.

“Heal,” he said, and he willed power into the words, willed them to be true and his heart unclenched, just for a moment, as the cut through the boys gut closed and his breathing started to even out.

“War Prince,” he panted, one hand caught in Yoongi's sleeve. “My Lord.”

“Stay down,” Yoongi said, clasping his hand. “What is your name?”

“Jihoon,” he gasped out, as through surprised he could speak. Yoongi smiled as much as he could.

“Jihoon. The shamans aren't far behind, they will heal you further. Stay down, warrior. You've done well.” Yoongi felt the boy clench his fist. His bloody smile felt like a reward.

“As you command,” he breathed.

Yoongi stood, holding his halberd in his bloodied right hand. “To me!” he shouted as he darted towards a higher, open spot on the plain, forcing his voice to boom across the battlefield where the dead and wounded lay broken on the ground, the green of the grass splashed in color. Rain started to fall and it slicked back his white hair, soaked the sleeves of his shirt and washed the blood from his face. He felt it fall like a lover's touch. “To me!” and they came, those of them that could; carrying one another, leaning, dragging themselves. Yoongi felt his power flowing like water, or air. He was a War Prince. He was _the_ War Prince and there were things within his power... There was something he could _do._ The Oberon had done what he could for this fight, he guided the battle at the Northern front, but here, Yoongi could change the tide. He was just as strong as the Oberon, if not stronger. They didn't have to lose. He wouldn't let them.

“Heal, my brothers,” he called. “My sons, my warriors! Heal and be strong. The battle is not over, not yet won. But you are strong.”

_Words have power._

“You are strong! And I believe in you!”

_I do believe in faeries._

“I believe in your strength!”

_I do believe in faeries._

“To victory!”

_I believe in my people._

They roared and Yoongi's words echoed across the fighting as he flung himself headlong into the enemy in their pale leathers, their blonde hair and shining weapons. Against them, his own people seemed pallid, desaturated, all of their color lost to grey and shadow, though he knew it was not true. It was just... Static. The appearance had to match the intention. Dark, light. Wickedness, Goodness. The truth of it all was so much more black and white than grey.

He cut down the enemy, their enemy, the light fae, the seelie they existed to balance against, the brightness they were destined to cull. He felt every inch the war prince he truly was: savage, raw, cutting down his enemy like the hand of a furious god, reviving his warriors with the sound of his voice. He was a monster. He was becoming the monster he was born to be.

“Cry for your mother, welp,” Yoongi heard the voice through a distance and the thunderous rain. “If you even have one.” The warrior stood tall and broad with a pike in one hand. His armor was splattered with color, his hair soaked with blood and rain. The grin on his face was an ugly, terrible thing despite his straight white teeth and pink lips. He was enjoying this. He was _taking pleasure_ in this.

Yoongi took no joy in this fighting. He was fearsome, wild, but he did not relish slitting throats, did not enjoy causing pain. He did his best to make sure their deaths were quick but the man in front of him, it seemed, did not share his feelings. The boy on the ground in front of him—a child, no older than Jimin or perhaps even Taehyung—trembled, mute and frozen. He had dark hair and ripped wings, an ugly wound through his left shoulder and his blood was a shimmering blue, like turquoise at the bottom of a river. It matched the blood on the seelie warrior's chestplate.

The pike drew back. The boy flinched down and Yoongi—

_My precious rainbaby._

_I do believe in faeries._

_This is what it means to be a leader._

—Yoongi threw himself forward. The pike burned as it passed through his belly. It burned so fast and so hot it felt ice cold and Yoongi tasted warm wet on his lips, heard frightened screaming at his back and horrible, guttural laughter at his front. As though he was moving through molasses he gripped the pole of the pike. Wrapped his fingers in a fist and held on.

“Some war prince you are,” the enemy snarled as the boy behind him sobbed wretchedly. “To think this pathetic, _useless_ child worth saving.”

Yoongi held tight to the pike and gathered his courage, his rage. He gathered his hate and felt it in his core, _my people, my home, how **dare you** _ and he dragged himself up the pike. It was agony as it pulled against his insides but he yanked regardless, snarled, spit in the face of the seelie warlord and grinned. The halberd in his free hand shrank to the size of an axe.

“Witness me,” his quiet voice rang like the toll of a distant bell across the field. It echoed in their ears and for a moment, all was still. All was silence as his voice ripped from his throat.

“ _Witness me!”_

And the axe swung, pulled.

Yoongi wrenched his arm and the warlord's head rolled to the ground, the braid a thick rope, a hangman's noose. Yoongi spat his blood, brilliant like fire opals or warm-lit moonstone. He spit blood and pain blossomed over his back, ripped between his shoulder blades.

“My Lord,” the boys voice, squeaking and weak. Yoongi barely heard him. “My—War Prince, please, stay with me, help is coming, they're coming, please—” Yoongi wondered when he had fallen to his knees. The pike pierced through him and he looked down at it, one hand still gripping the wood. “Oh god, oh god it's iron, the tip is iron—” The boy was crying, struggling to keep Yoongi from bleeding, his hands pressed around the pike and his chest heaving, broken wings fluttering weakly.

Yoongi reached out one hand and smoothed his bloodied fingers through the boys dark hair, leaving traces of shimmering red. “Don't cry,” he said, feeling cold all over. “Don't cry. Have faith.”

“Yes, War Prince,” he sobbed and Yoongi smiled, tasted his own blood like green leaves as the last of the human magic faded away from him. It bled away and in it's place was the wet, heavy weight of wings.

~

Yoongi woke on a bed, lying on his belly. He was... Sore, all over. His back ached, and he groaned as he tried to push himself up, gasping in pain at the tug of his muscles.

“Stay down,” came Taehyung's voice. “Don't try to get up. Your body is still trying to recover from the trauma.”

“The boy,” Yoongi said, his voice grinding out. “The boy.”

“He's all right,” Taehyung murmured, coming into Yoongi's vision, offering him a piece of an orange to chew. “Scared out of his mind, but he's all right. We managed to save most of his wings.”

“How many dead,” he rasped, fingers clawed into the blankets. The battle was over, if he was laying in a bed with Taehyung attending to him. The battle was over. Won, or lost? “How many dead.”

“...A hundred and seven. One hundred and seven, lost. Glory to the victorious dead.” Taehyung whispered. Yoongi's heart dropped. More than a tenth of the warriors who had gone with him had died in the effort to keep balance, to maintain the rightness of the world. A hundred and seven.

“Hail.” Yoongi's chest hurt. “Give me their names,” he replied, feeling tears gathering in his eyes.

“Later,” Taehyung said, bending to kiss his cheek. “Later. When you're well, Yoongi. Not now.”

“Taehyung,” he gasped, when it seemed that Taehyung was going to leave his field of vision and disappear beyond where he could see.

“Yes,” he asked, crouching back down. “What is it?”

“Don't go,” he said. Taehyung smiled, leaned to kiss his lips, despite the effort it took to tuck his hand under Yoongi's head and lift it to kiss him. “Please.”

“I won't,” he promised. “I told Jeongguk I'd be here when you woke up.”

“Jeongguk,” he said.

“The boy,” Taehyung replied. “The boy you saved. His name is Jeongguk.”

“Ah.”

“He refused to leave you. It was a bit... Darling, if I'm honest. He spent the night with me here, said he didn't want to leave until he was sure you were all right.”

“He sounds like a child,” he laughed, and Taehyung nodded.

“Perhaps,” he said. “Perhaps.”

~

When he woke again, it was the boy at his bedside, curled up in the leaves. His wings were, as Taehyung had said, mostly in one piece. Their edges were tattered, and he might never properly fly again, but at least they hadn't been amputated. Yoongi wondered, quietly, if Lace had survived.

“Jeongguk,” he said, and the boy jerked up, eyes wide in alarm. It was a bit comical. Yoongi chuckled and Jeongguk relaxed, holding his chest with one hand.

“My Lord,” he said, with a tiny smile on his mouth. His teeth were a bit crooked. Stuck out. Yoongi slowly sat up, rather sick of lying on his belly and grunted at how heavy he felt. “Careful,” Jeongguk said, leaning forward to reach and steady him by the shoulders. “Careful. Taehyung said your wings are still uncurling, you have to be gentle with them.”

“My wings,” Yoongi said, and somehow it didn't surprise him. Of course he had wings. He was a faerie. He was a War Prince, what sort of proper War Prince didn't have wings?

What sort of faerie didn't have wings?

Outside the leaves and twigs, the sun pierced through the canopy, and Yoongi could not recall the sound of rain.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am literally the worst at action scenes, so please forgive how not-quality this is @_@; practice makes better! i just wish it worked faster.  
> thank you all so much for your comments and kudos, my icy little heart melts just a little every time!


	6. the housewarden.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which we hear seokjin's story.

The battle had not ended at the field. Yoongi fought it every day, trapped under Taehyung's ruthlessly sharp eyes. He was forced to stay still, to recover from iron poisoning _(if you'd been anyone else you'd be dead, yoongi, do you understand me, you stay in that bed until I tell you to get up)_ and he had every dead warrior's family led in to see him, to speak to them personally. It broke his heart, and he could offer them little comfort, but they didn't blame him. He wished they would. The deaths were his responsibility, his mistake. He was a leader, a War Prince. He should have done _more._

He did his best to keep those thoughts to himself. There was no sense in upsetting anyone who came to see him. Hoseok had come on the third day, with bandaged legs and bright eyes, to announce that Lace was _fine,_ she was hugely angry that Yoongi hadn't been down to the stables, but she'd _probably_ forgive him when he managed to get down there. Seokjin brought Yoongi his meals and massaged the ache from his hands. Taehyung, as his attending nurse, spent just as much time checking his wings and forcing him to stay in bed as he did kissing the back of Yoongi's neck and even Jeongguk came in and out, offering small treats from his garden _(that's what I do, I tend a garden, my lord)_ and blushing when Yoongi suggested there were better gifts he could be given, while waggling his eyebrows and grinning as foolishly as he could manage, just to make the somber boy smile. Jimin stayed by his bedside when he could, and didn't bother trying to hide his tears when Yoongi finally saw that his left wing had been ripped nearly in half; a small force of elite warriors had been sent to the city proper, and Jimin... Jimin was a fighter. He was a fighter and he had saved them all, according to Namjoon. The cost had been great. _I'll never fly again._

_Of course you will._

Yoongi's own wings began to properly unfurl, finally. With the physical trauma healing, they spread out; black and white and blue, translucent and glossy and glittering. They flexed and fluttered like they'd always been there and perhaps they had been. Waiting for the moment to burst free.

~

“The Oberon, War Prince,” Seokjin said softly, stepping out of the doorway. Yoongi had been back in his own quarters for nearly seven days, and he wasn't surprised that the Oberon was coming to see him. He'd been successful in his battle as well; the forces at the northern edge of the Mistman's Wood had been all but slaughtered. Yoongi was fearsome, but the Oberon was _experienced._ He knew what he was doing, and Yoongi was rather bitter that he hadn't been... More prepared. Taught better. One hundred and seven.

“Come in,” he said, navigating easily through the breezy room, motioning for the Oberon to take a seat near to the unlit fireplace. “To what do I owe your presence?”

“I've come to uphold my end of the deal, War Prince,” he said, and Yoongi frowned, the expression delicate on his face. Seokjin stood in the doorway, stiff and still.

“Deal,” Yoongi repeated.

“Yes,” the Oberon replied, settling into the chair and crossing his legs. He looked every inch the reveler he had been when Yoongi had first taken his place in the court proper, and he couldn't help but smile. It was a strange and comforting sight, though something niggled in the back of his head that he could not place. A sound, or a smell. The familiarity was just out of reach. “My end of the deal. It was promised that once you had won this war, you could go home,”

“I am home,” Yoongi said, at the same time the Oberon spoke,

“To the human world and the mother that awaits you there.”

“Mother?” Yoongi asked. He pursed his lips and slowly shook his head. “I remember no such thing. Besides that, we don't have mothers, Oberon.”

“Jiho,” the Oberon said. “You should call me Jiho.”

“Jiho, then,” Yoongi replied. “I've no memory of this promise, or this _mother._ So again I must ask, to what do I owe the pleasure of your company.”

The Oberon—Jiho. Looked at Yoongi with his single dark, single light eye and reached out for his hand. Yoongi offered it, his fingernails a deep and beautiful blue at the root, turning clear the further up they went until they reached the edge where they turned sharp. Fae claws. Fae claws, to match the wings sprouting from his back.

“Your mother,” he said slowly, his words weaving a spell. “Min Jieun.”

“I do not know that name,” he confessed, though the magic was tracing over his skin and into his hair, against his nose in a memory that he couldn't quite grasp. Something he'd forgotten, something important. Someone. The smell of flowers, and the sound of rain against tarmac. The rusted steel beams of a human-made bridge, the bellflower cradle he'd been lifted from.

“Remember.”

In the doorway, Seokjin held his breath.

~

When Yoongi had first arrived, Seokjin had been furious. First, that he'd been taken away from the human world in such a callous manner— _I know we are desperate but to kidnap him? Kidnap?—_ and that he clearly knew nothing. The liaisons had all but thrown a bag over his head and dragged him here, and when he was turned over to Seokjin, unconscious and pale as the moon, he'd felt his heart twist in worry and fear. He was a child. The War Prince was little more than a child, and he'd tucked him down into the cart and pulled the petals over his head for safety. He pressed a kiss to his temple and climbed up into the driver's seat, snapping the reigns on the horses to start them on the journey to the capital city.

Taehyung had accompanied him, solemn and just as confused as Seokjin had been. Seokjin had always supported his brother and enjoyed his company; the two of them had been born from the same bushel of primroses, though a few years apart. He was especially glad for his presence now; the knowledge that he was taking the War Prince home was a heavy responsibility on his shoulders.

It was Taehyung who jerked out of the seat, using his wings to get himself to the ground and start running after the War Prince when he fled. The guardsmen had followed quick after him, but had lost him into the trees and Seokjin had closed his eyes to pray to Titania and all her court that his brother—and the War Prince—would come back safely.

“We have to continue,” Seokjin had said. “There's no point in sitting here waiting for them. He'll come.”

The guardsman had their doubts but sure enough, Taehyung appeared in the path before them, walking backward as he spoke to the War Prince, who looked even more small and fragile than he had when Seokjin had first taken him into his arms.

“You should rest,” Taehyung was saying, as Seokjin hopped down from the cart to walk silently towards them, not wanting to interrupt the spell Taehyung was casting. “You've been running for a long time, so you should really just rest.”

Taehyung collapsed as the War Prince started to fall and Seokjin lurched forward to catch them, one on each strong arm, a head on each shoulder. His brother took a few moments to recover, breathing hard, eyes fully black with effort, but he stood on his own and turned to Seokjin and as his eyes melted back to their beautiful brown and green Seokjin was bursting with pride.

“Good job, Taehyung,” he whispered, pressing a kiss to Taehyung's cheek, the corner of his mouth, soft on his lips. “We need to get him home.”

“Is he gonna be okay?” Taehyung asked, and Seokjin pursed his lips. “He can't see them. He doesn't have the sight anymore. He might never get it back, what if he never gets it back—”

“We'll have to deal with that when the time comes,” Seokjin whispered, and Taehyung had nodded, face tight with distress. “Come,” he said, offering another gentle kiss. “We should go. You're exhausted too, Taehyung.”

He'd tucked Taehyung down into the cart with the War Prince and led the horses home. The entire experience left him feeling drained, his eyes drooping closed, and when they arrived back at the city it was Hoseok who greeted them, who took Seokjin down from the seat and scolded him gently.

“You should have let me go,” he said, and Seokjin shook his head, even as Jimin came and swept Taehyung up into his arms, as Namjoon took the War Prince to his quarters. “You should have let me go. You're too delicate.”

“I am not _delicate,_ ” he hissed, rather cross at the implication that he couldn't take care of himself. “They _kidnapped him,_ lifted him right from the street with no warning, he took off, he's probably terrified and I can't blame him, how _foolish—_ and besides that I'm just as capable as you are, Hoseok, and I don't appreciate you saying I'm not.”

“I never said that you weren't,” Hoseok murmured, and Seokjin's cheeks burned with embarrassment at how calm the younger man was. He hadn't said that, had he. Seokjin was just... Agitated.

“It was done all wrong,” Seokjin whispered. “We were meant to speak to him, explain. Now he's going to wake in a strange place alone and...”

“And he is the War Prince,” Hoseok assured. “He'll be fine.”

Seokjin hadn't believed him, as Hoseok led him to his quarters and laid him down, smoothed hands up and down his body and lips across his neck. Seokjin's wings had fluttered and his fingers dug familiar bruises into Hoseok's shoulders and the stress slowly bled out of him, wicked away with the sweat. He hadn't believed him, but by the time he was laying beside Hoseok, their hands clasped and their lips slipping lazily together, he believed it could be true.

Though, as he'd woken the War Prince from a night terror, he wasn't so sure.

He'd heard the screaming all the way from his quarters. He'd thrown himself from the bed where he'd laid down with Namjoon earlier that evening and run to the War Prince—Yoongi, his name was Yoongi. He'd been thrashing in his bed, clawing at the sheets and Seokjin simply did as he always did, when Taehyung had a nightmare, or Jimin.

“Wake up, wake up, Yoongi,” he reached to shake his shoulders. _“Wake up!_ ”

Yoongi had thrown himself forward and landed in Seokjin's chest. His screams turned to choking sobs, his hands tore at Seokjin's bare torso as he cried. Seokjin's heart _ached._ “Shh,” he murmured, soft nothings in comfort, what comfort he could give. “Shh, it's all right, it was just a dream, it's all right.”

“I wanna go home,” Yoongi choked out, and Seokjin didn't know where to direct his hatred and so he locked it behind his teeth, nodded quietly and pressed his cheek into Yoongi's white, white hair. It had been black, when he'd been laying in the cart, bled into white the longer he was there, in the Wood.

“I know,” Seokjin said. The truth might not be the best comfort, but it was better than lying to him. “I know, I know, I'm sorry. It was done all wrong. You weren't meant to be taken that way, I'm sorry Yoongi. It wasn't meant to happen this way.”

Yoongi sniffled wretchedly against his shoulder before he pushed away, slowly. Seokjin held lightly to his elbow and bit his lip when Yoongi spoke. “What's happening to me?” Assuming that he meant the change in his physical appearance, Seokjin said,

“The magic is coming back to you.”

“I don't understand,” Yoongi replied, his voice thick with frustration. Seokjin felt it, too. It shouldn't have been this bad, this complicated. They'd wanted Yoongi to come willingly. “I want to go home.”

“Yoongi... Yoongi, I'm sorry, but... But you can't.”

“I want my mom.”

Seokjin flinched as though he'd been struck. This was the worst part, he'd been told. Yoongi was raised with humans, he was very, very human. The human magic clung to him, that special something that made humans who and what they were and Seokjin felt his wings twitch. He had to take this slowly. He had to tell the truth. Namjoon might have thought it was a bad idea, but Seokjin couldn't lie to him. Not when he was so miserable, eyes swollen and nose rubbed red.

“Yoongi... Please, you don't, you can't go back right now. You can't. You don't belong there, it's already... Re-shaping itself without you.” It was cruel to tell him such things, even though it was true. His presence had deformed the human space; it was likely that it was slowly shifting back into place even as Yoongi sat there with his head hung.

“What does that _mean_.” His voice was grating and furious and Seokjin prepared himself for a battle, but was interrupted.

“It's com—” he stopped, the dancing light of pixies flying through the air like butterflies, landing on Yoongi's hair, in his sheets, on the crown of flowers in Seokjin's own dark hair. “Stop that,” he said, waving his hand to create a breeze and throw them of course, as they seemed determined to get as close to Yoongi's face as possible. “Give him some space, would you.”

Where pixies were, Taehyung was not far behind, and Seokjin turned to face him where he stood beside the bed, dressed in his green robes to match his green wings.

“Your Grace,” Taehyung's voice was grave and tight. He was there on official business. “Your presence is requested.”

“He's in no fit state to go anywhere, Taehyung—” Seokjin protested.

“His majesty commands,” Taehyung said, and Seokjin bared his teeth. _Of course_ the Oberon would choose this moment to arrive from the Rosegully, of course, when Yoongi was vulnerable and exhausted and small against Seokjin's chest. Of course he would demand his presence.

“Tell him I will bring him when he's ready and no sooner.”

“As you wish, Seokjin.”

There was a moment of silence, and Seokjin took a slow, deep breath. “Come on, Yoongi, you have to get up.” He didn't know how else to ask. Yoongi had to get up. He had to _get up._

“Why,” he asked and Seokjin swallowed.

“Because if you don't, we're all very much in trouble.”

“Why do I care?” Yoongi asked. Seokjin bit at his lips and decided to tell the truth, no matter how much it upset him.

“Yoongi,” he said. “Yoongi, please, I know... I know it's all wrong right now, I'm sorry, but we need you, please, can't you pretend to play a part for just a little while until we...” he was getting breathless. The fear of the Winter's Rest had been growing but now it was nearly at their borders and the time for war was clawing it's way over the black hills; Seokjin was just as afraid as everyone else, just as desperate, and it had been cruel to drag Yoongi here from the mortal life he'd built but— “Until we can make up for how you've been wronged? Please? We need you. I swear, I'll—I'll do what I can to make sure you can return home, I promise, I swear on my wings but we need you now, we _need you._ ”

No words could describe Seokjin's relief and pride when Yoongi pushed himself up from the bed and swung his legs over the side. He was small, skinny and fragile, but he was a War Prince. In time, he would come to realize that.

And he did.

Seokjin watched Yoongi change, watched him grow. He saw his fury as he faced down the Oberon in the court, saw him gain the trust and respect of the faeries around him. He often seemed sad, wrote in a journal he insisted on carrying everywhere and while Seokjin couldn't fathom what he was writing, he was glad he had an outlet of some kind. When Seokjin found him in the middle of his room, destroyed, broken furniture, broken glass, he'd walked to him and taken his shaking hand. Yoongi's eyes were wild and desperate and Seokjin did what he knew he could do: he laid him down in the blankets and curled up behind him, kissed his neck and head and held his hands. _I'm scared,_ Yoongi whispered, and Seokjin pressed their bodies together a little more closely.

 _They want to believe in you,_ he'd assured, pressing a kiss to Yoongi's cheek. The warriors wanted to believe in him, it was true. Word of his prowess, of how quickly he was becoming a proper War Prince, had boosted the morale of those who would be fighting. He'd become a figure worthy of respect and so they wanted to respect him and likely would, despite his fear. But Yoongi needed comforting. _So... Be someone they can believe in.That's what it means, to be a leader._

When Seokjin finally laid with Yoongi, days before he was due to leave with the army, he'd decided. He'd known then, that Yoongi was a man he would kill for, die for. He was not a fighter but Yoongi was, and it was only his incredible strength that had guided him thus far. Despite his own confusion and fear he'd overcome the challenge set before him and he was a War Prince. Thus, Seokjin had moved into the line of Yoongi's pacing and reached to touch him.

“Yoongi,” Seokjin tenderly cupped his neck and Yoongi bared his teeth. “Yoongi. There are better ways to deal with this.”

“And what are those,” he snarled. Seokjin grabbed him by the waist and used his greater height and strength to shove Yoongi up against the wall, crowding him against it and breathing hot against his lips and cheek.

“You honestly don't know?”

It was less fight than Seokjin had been expecting. Yoongi all but melted against him, fingernails digging into his back the way they had that first night and Seokjin felt his heart squeeze. Yoongi was so afraid, and Seokjin hated it. He laid Yoongi down in the petals, settled himself between the younger man's skinny legs and as Yoongi had gasped, clutched at his shoulders and wings Seokjin had known that if Yoongi didn't come back.

If he didn't come back, he might never recover. He would wilt and die.

“I love you,” Yoongi panted, thighs tight on Seokjin's hips. “I love you.” Seokjin laughed, kissed his neck and lips as though to taste the words and what they meant.

“You're very foolish,” he whispered, and Yoongi nodded. Seokjin didn't understand what Yoongi meant by love; he suspected it was very different than the kind of love shared between himself and the others, Jimin, Namjoon, Hoseok, Taehyung. He suspected it was something very human, and he appreciated it for what it was.

A promise.

_I will do my best. I will come back._

_Please come back to me._

He had. He had, and though the iron pike should have killed him he'd survived. He'd survived, but something inside of him was missing. Seokjin could see it, when he looked around, when he breathed. He could feel it in Yoongi's skinny hands, taste it in the scent of his neck. Taehyung had told Seokjin in quiet confidence that the iron pike should have killed him, but the human magic, all that made him pass as mundane, had saved him. But it was gone, now. It was gone and never had that been more clear than this instant, when Seokjin stood in the doorway and watched as Yoongi cocked his head in confusion.

_I've no memory of this promise, or this mother._

Yoongi had forgotten.

"Remember."

He'd become a War Prince, a true War Prince, but the cost had been too great.

Seokjin held his breath for a moment before he turned away. He turned away, and all but fled.

 


	7. the quartermaster.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which we learn a little more about our quartermaster.

Hoseok had done his best to make sure that Yoongi didn't feel alienated. After hearing from Seokjin—that he'd been _kidnapped,_ that he'd taken off in fear and had to be spelled back by Taehyung, he'd decided to treat Yoongi the same way he treated everyone else: with his usual exuberance and kindness, because he didn't want him to feel as though he wasn't welcome, or wanted. There was more to him than the expectation of a War Prince, and Hoseok thought it was only fair.

“I'm Hoseok,” he'd said, grinning brightly at the small, pale creature that came down the stairs with Jimin. “And you must be Yoongi.” Seokjin had murmured that it might not be the best idea to call Yoongi _War Prince,_ just yet. The role was frightening, and his... Confrontation with the Oberon had indeed made it's way down to Hoseok's ears. He might have been nothing more than a quartermaster, but he paid sharp attention. “It's nice to meet you.”

“Ah,” Yoongi had said, and that tiny little syllable had endeared him so much to Hoseok's heart that he was determined to keep him from getting upset anywhere in his presence at any time. “You, too. You're a...?”

“Quartermaster,” Hoseok replied, fluffing up his wings a little in pride. He did take great pride in his role. It was important, what he did. “I'm in charge of the horses, tack and armory. I made your halberd.”

“The one they gave me a few days ago?”

“Yes!” Hoseok grinned. “I'm glad you remember. I'm glad it finally got to you! When you arrived the housemaster commissioned it, so I made it specifically for you. Imagine my disappointment when the thrice-damned thing had to sit down here and _rot_ for eighteen years!”

“I,” Yoongi started, his eyes wide with alarm. Hoseok just moved about the place, checking temperatures and pulling at ropes. “I'm sorry?”

“Bah! Don't be! Works like a charm though, right? Brings it right out of you, the fighting instinct. _And_ it comes when called. Have you tried it yet?” Hoseok was eager to know; when he'd made it, he'd attempted to make sure that every ounce of the magic in the materials he'd been given would respond to the War Prince exactly as it should. It had been tricky, and torturous to look at the halberd, quiet in the corner of the armory for eighteen long years.

“I don't know how,” Yoongi said. Hoseok was already striding towards him, grabbing his wrist to pull him into a more open area than the middle of the smithy, because this required a _demonstration_ and it wouldn't do to accidentally knock anything over. The look on Yoongi's face made Hoseok laugh; he seemed so confused and alarmed. “What—”

“Call it,” Hoseok said, his eyes bright with mirth and sly wisdom. He needed to know if it worked, or if the magic had died while waiting for Yoongi to come back. “Call it to your hand. It's yours, it will come.”

“But I don't know how, what are you even talking about?”

“Oh come on, Yoongi,” Yoongi jerked a bit and Jimin rolled his eyes on the other side of the room. Hoseok puffed out his cheeks. “You're not even trying! Have a little _faith._ ”

“Faith,” Yoongi said, swallowing.

“Yeah, like. You know, like when you know it's gonna be sunny once the rain is over. Have some faith! Call it to you. It's yours.” Hoseok was pressed close to Yoongi's back, holding his elbow and his wrist in the proper position to make the weapon respond. He kept his voice a low and intimate whisper, to work his own kind of quiet magic. Giving confidence, hope and faith. “Command it to come.”

Yoongi took in a deep breath and closed his eyes. Hoseok felt the wash of magic flow over them and grinned when Yoongi nearly fell back into him, holding his arms to keep him upright.

“It shrinks to the size of a regular axe, too,” Hoseok said, beaming with pride despite himself. He'd done everything right, just as he'd known. “Just will it to be so. It will do as you command. It was made from you.”

“What?” Yoongi asked. He was shaking his head and watching the halberd as it shrank and changed shape.

“It was made with a lock of your hair, so no one will be able to pull out it's abilities but you. Your hair and a bit of blood.”

“I don't think I needed to know that,” he said, and Hoseok laughed. Yoongi was probably right.

“Don't worry too much about it,” he said, clapping Yoongi on the back as friendly and warm as he could. He didn't want him to feel singled out, didn't want the friendship to feel forced, when it blossomed. “Worry about that when the time comes to make your armor. You're gonna need it, my great War Prince. But for now we need to find you a mount, so come on, to the stables with you!”

Jimin squawked as Hoseok shoved Yoongi down a hallway out towards the bright sun and greenery of the city proper and Hoseok thought he was rather overreacting. It wasn't as though he was _hurting_ Yoongi, as he gripped him by the wrist and led him down into the stables. He walked right past the horses, the dragonflies. He led Yoongi past the bumblebees and down to the hornets, all of them watching with disinterest until he stopped them right in front of the white-tipped hornet he'd been training for the last eighteen years.

Lace was a beast. Large, even for a hornet, she was fearsome and loyal, ate lumps of pear from his hands and buzzed with pleasure when he washed her. She was terrifying and beautiful and she was perfect for Yoongi. Patient, already trained, responsive to positive enforcement. Perfect.

“You _cannot_ be serious,” Jimin said, being a killjoy as usual when his wings flared out, red and orange and yellow, bright and shimmering. Hoseok would have stuck out his tongue, if he'd thought it would have made any difference in the world. “Training a hornet is a serious task, he doesn't have that long—and besides that, I think you've scared him.”

“Scary? This baby girl?” Hoseok walked right up to Lace and rubbed at her head, kissed the smooth shell of her exoskeletal skull. “Nah. Lace is harmless! Sharp, on the other hand, is a _monster_ so don't go anywhere near _that_ pen,” Hoseok pointed to right where Yoongi was standing and Yoongi jerked forward, tripping, falling back into Lace with his wide eyes on the pen he'd moved away from.

Sharp was a rather ill-tempered wasp. Small for his breed and apparently very angry about it. Hoseok was still working with him, but he didn't want Yoongi to get stung. Hoseok watched as Yoongi struggled to stay upright, sliding to the ground and just sitting there as Lace fiddled at his hair with her mandibles, kneading.

“She likes you!” Hoseok chirped. He'd known she would. She was patient and friendly no matter what Jimin said and he didn't miss how Jimin rolled his eyes, though the relief in the lines of his shoulders was palpable.

“Here, get up,” he hauled Yoongi to his feet. “Lets get you outside to tack her up, huh? It's not hard, I promise.”

“Tack?” Yoongi asked, sounding dazed.

“Yeah, her saddle and stuff. You need that if you're gonna ride her. You don't want to try bareback the first time, trust me, it _hurts.”_

“R. Ride?”

Hoseok had to try very hard not to burst out laughing.

~

After his initial scare (which Hoseok felt only a _little_ bad about) Yoongi came down to see Hoseok more regularly. He trained with him in combat and riding; Yoongi was a natural, as Hoseok knew he would be. He seemed to appreciate the way Hoseok didn't treat him like anything special, and Hoseok did his best to maintain that, even after Yoongi had walked in on Jimin between Hoseok's legs on the tanning table. Yoongi had left with a hard blush on his face as Jimin laughed about how much of a prude he was while kissing Hoseok's breathless, laughing mouth.

Deep down in his chest, Hoseok had been worried. He'd thought, for a while, that what the two of them had been doing made Yoongi uncomfortable, even disgusted. But that changed. It changed when Yoongi was having an exceptionally poor day, trouble concentrating and falling off of Lace more times than he'd managed to stay on. After removing her tack, Yoongi had walked up to Hoseok and, after a moment of hesitation, pressed himself into his chest.

Hoseok wrapped his arms around him and kissed him all over his pale, sweet face. “You did well today,” he said, and Yoongi shook his head.

“Not well enough.”

“No one becomes an expert over night, Yoongi. It's only been a few days.”

“It feels like I don't have any time.”

“You do,” Hoseok said, and he cupped Yoongi's jaw and pressed the softest of kisses to his mouth. “You have time, and I have time. I will teach you. You will learn. But for now, it's time to let go of today. Come,” he tugged Yoongi out of the stables. “Come with me, I want to show you something.”

Hoseok went often to the place where he'd been born; under the towering stalks of daffodils, he'd tumbled right out of a blossom, down onto leaf, and onto the ground. “An altogether very inelegant affair,” he said, putting on airs of being upper-class and Yoongi laughed. Hoseok smiled. Yoongi's laughter could break and create pixies.

“It's my favorite place,” he said, tucking the two of them beneath that very daffodil he'd been born from. “You should come here, when it gets hard. It's full of life, and hope. Those things are just as important as combat training, as riding, as the responsibilities you have. You can't forget to breathe, Yoongi.”

They sat in silence for a very long time. Hoseok was sure Yoongi had fallen asleep, when the smaller man tucked himself close and pulled their clasped hands up to his mouth to kiss their knuckles.

“Thank you,” he said, his voice so gentle it was almost a summer breeze. “For showing me this place.”

“I will take you across the entire Mistman's Wood and show you all the wondrous places,” Hoseok whispered, nudging at Yoongi's head to give him a soft, open-mouthed kiss. Yoongi kissed him back, and Hoseok thought he might never be happier than he was at that moment, under the daffodils with Yoongi. His War Prince, but moreso, his friend.

~

“We're the bad guys, aren't we,” Yoongi murmured, and Hoseok stopped where he was pulling the straps on Yoongi's armor tight. They'd only finished fitting it a few days before, and he was still worried about it tugging, pinching in the wrong places. Bad armor could be just as dangerous as no armor at all, but Yoongi was speaking and he tried to pay attention. “We're the ones humans tell their children to be afraid of.” Hoseok felt the weight of the statement, though not so keenly as Yoongi did. Yoongi was only just becoming aware of the Balance. He didn't understand that it was simply the way of things. “We're the bad guys.”

“We're enforcers,” Hoseok corrected, standing up straight. His face was stained with warpaint like Yoongi's, and his hands had smudged it across Yoongi's dark leathers. His personal touch, he smiled, and looked up at his friend. “Someone has to keep the light in bounds. After all,” and perhaps Hoseok felt a bit of sadistic pleasure. Perhaps he thought for a moment how _good_ it would be to have a chance to savage the faeries who had before savaged him, killed his friends, shattered his life into pieces before he'd managed to pick up and start all over again. “What means a light, with no shadow to define it, War Prince. There is no light, without darkness.”

“Hoseok, I am afraid.” Yoongi's voice was small as he reached out to hold on to Hoseok's shoulder.

“Don't be afraid,” he replied, holding Yoongi's shoulder in return. “You have nothing to fear. You are the War Prince, the most powerful there's been in centuries. You have the Oberon. You have _us._ You have nothing to fear, Yoongi. Nothing.” Hoseok moved closer, let one hand rake up into Yoongi's hair and drew him in. “And when you return in glorious victory we will celebrate your ascension with such fierceness the entire world will know that the War Prince of the Mistman's Wood is a force to be reckoned with. That he led his army against impossible odds and _won._ ”

“Hoseok,” Yoongi whispered, eyes wide. Hoseok wanted nothing more in that moment than to tear Yoongi to pieces with his teeth, to eat his heart and live inside his ribcage. The ferocity of his feelings should have terrified him, but he'd learned not to speak them. Let them show themselves.

“And when you return in glorious victory,” Hoseok said, his hands settling on Yoongi's small waist with a bruising grip. “Your rewards will be great in both number and worth.”

“Hoseok,” Yoongi breathed, his hands finding their way into Hoseok's hair. They yanked one another in for a savage kiss, more tooth than lip. Hoseok slammed him back into the wall of the smithy and then onto the tanning table, ripping him free of his armor. As the storm came down onto the city, Hoseok bore down into Yoongi and their sharp nails dug furrows, their hard teeth left bruises and Yoongi's hands wrapped around the base of his wings as they flared out, gold and orange and leaving a shimmering fall of dust on Yoongi's moon-pale skin with every brutal thrust.

~

On the morning of battle, Yoongi had bitten a dark bruise into Hoseok's throat, just to the left of his clavicle. Hoseok had opened his legs and Yoongi had claimed him, bitten him, ripped his fingernails over his skin and the wounds healed quickly, though the pain was delicious. The fear hung over them like fog, that they would never see one another again, that one or both of them would die, though neither of them voiced it.

“I'll be waiting,” Yoongi said.

“I won't be late,” Hoseok replied, climbing up onto his own mount, a yellow-jacket he called _Sunny_ before kicking off the ground. He scouted, came back, but by the time he got back to the battlefield proper, the fighting had begun.

And he couldn't see Yoongi at all.

~

Hoseok didn't really _remember_ falling off of Sunny. He didn't remember hitting the ground but he remembered the agony in his legs and when he finally got to see Yoongi (after he'd taken an _iron pike_ through the chest) he'd complained about it profusely. Well, that and how agitated Lace was.

“Make time for the girl!” he said, carefully getting up. He could walk now, though carefully. The scars on his legs might never fade, but it was a small price to pay to be able to walk. “She'd love to see you.”

“I'll come down as soon as I can,” he said. “And Hoseok,” Hoseok turned to look at him and was startled, as he always was, by how incredibly beautiful his War Prince was. “I'll make time for you, too. There are rewards you owe me.”

Hoseok grinned and felt his heart swell. His War Prince.

“Of course.”

His Yoongi.

 


	8. the shaman.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which we learn a little more about taehyung.

All Taehyung could see was fear.

“I want to go _home,_ ” Yoongi said. Taehyung had been following him silently since he'd fled the cart, waiting for the right moment to show himself and now was the time, as Yoongi growled and rubbed his hands over his face, pulled at his hair.

“Where's home?” he asked, and Yoongi threw himself backwards, slamming his head into the tree with a loud curse, jerking forward to cup the back of his head and glare out into the green. Honestly, Taehyung was surprised he could see him. He knew he blended in well; that was the job of a shaman, to be so in touch with the world that they could bleed back into it.

His small wings twitched when it took too long for Yoongi to answer.

“Who the fuck are you?” he finally said, and Taehyung blinked. Who did he mean? Himself? Or did he want the names of every pixie that had followed him here, chittering in delight at the idea of meeting the War Prince himself.

“Me?” he asked, cocking his head and turning to look at the pixies near his shoulders. “Or them?”

“What? You, there's no one else here.”

Taehyung felt his blood freeze. Yoongi couldn't see them. This boy, who was supposed ot be their War Prince, couldn't see the pixies and most likely didn't care to, if his tone was any indication. He didn't appreciate it. He felt a scowl work across his features and jerked his head to avoid it.

“Just because you can't see them,” he said. “Doesn't mean they aren't there.”

“...Right,” Yoongi replied. Taehyung walked closer, halted when Yoongi held up a hand. “Stop right there, don't come any closer. Don't.”

“Of course,” he said, disappointed and afraid and let down by all of this. So much fear, so much... Negativity. “As you command. But you really can't see them, can you.” He tried to smile and failed. “You've been gone for so long you can't see them anymore.”

“See what,” Yoongi asked. “See _who._ ”

“The pixies,” Taehyung sat down, crossed his legs and pursed his lips tightly. “Your people.”

“What?”

“He said you'd be disoriented, he said you'd be confused, but he didn't...” Maybe Seokjin hadn't known. Maybe he hadn't known, because the people who had been sent to retrieve Yoongi hadn't bothered to find out. Maybe he didn't know but maybe he did and Taehyung felt panic welling up in his throat the War Prince didn't have the Sight, he didn't have the _Sight._ “He didn't say you'd lost the Sight.”

“What the _fuck_ are you talking about?” Yoongi hissed, and Taehyung physically recoiled from the aggression in his voice. “What is going on, where the hell _am I?_ ”

“You're in the world inside the world,” he said. “Where you came from. Why don't you remember? The Mistman's Wood. The Unseelie Court.”

“ _What?_ ” Yoongi asked, jerking to his feet and swaying. Taehyung did the same, not wanting to lose sight of him. “What are you... Even talking about, what. I want to go _home,_ where is this, am I still in Korea? I want—I want to go home, I want my _mom—”_

Confused, Taehyung decided it would be best to pull the spell through now, before Yoongi had a chance to get too worked up. He pulled them to the path where he knew Seokjin would meet them, and spoke as gently as he could. “You should rest,” he said, even as he wondered what _mom_ was, why Yoongi was so distressed. “You've been running for a long time, so you should really just rest.”

Taehyung swayed, felt himself staggering as the War Prince started to fall and Seokjin caught them just as he'd known he would, one on each strong arm, a head on each shoulder. Taehyung took a few minutes of hard breathing, clutching on to Seokjin's arm to gather enough of himself to stand on his own. The power that had taken was immense. He had no idea how far from the road they'd been, or how long he'd been chasing Yoongi around the woods, but Seokjin's warm smile made it completely worth it.

“Good job, Taehyung,” Seokjin whispered, an Taehyung accepted his kisses with eager happiness, adoring the praise for a job well done. “We need to get him home.”

“Is he gonna be okay?” Taehyung asked, and Seokjin pursed his lips. “He can't see them.” Taehyung swallowed hard. “He doesn't have the sight anymore. He might never get it back, what if he never gets it back—”

“We'll have to deal with that when the time comes,” Seokjin whispered, and Taehyung had nodded, face tight with distress. “Come, we should go. You're exhausted too, Taehyung.”

Taehyung nodded, and as he followed Seokjin to the cart, he couldn't take his eyes off of Yoongi.

Yoongi had been afraid. He was terrified and as Taehyung spoke the words to put him to sleep, he was terrified too. Taehyung had heard stories of course. About how the savage, fearsome War Prince would come back from exile to help them wage war against the Winter's Rest, but he'd never really thought about the reality of it. Seokjin had always same the reality was very different than what everyone thought.

That was very clear, as he looked at the short, skinny creature that was... Would be? The War Prince. As Seokjin tucked them both down into the petals, Taehyung looked at him, at Yoongi. Took in the soft curve of his cheeks, the slope of his nose and the small, soft pink of his mouth. His hair was bleeding from black to white, and Taehyung reached out to brush it from his face.

Yoongi didn't look like a War Prince at all. He looked like a child, and Taehyung determined that he would do his best, do what he could, to help him become what he was expected to be.

~

His job, when Yoongi was considered well enough to actually interact with other creatures and _not_ yell, was to teach him magic. It sounded a lot easier than it was. Taehyung had a natural affinity _and_ had been practicing for nearly all of his life, ever since he'd tumbled out of the primrose, but Yoongi. Yoongi had _not._ Still, they started small. Little things. Move this paper with wind, make your breath a breeze. Whisper to me over here, make your voice reach me.

Heal this wound, bring his flower back from wilt.

Bring this flower back to life.

With every lesson Yoongi got a little bit better and Taehyung started to have hope, real hope, that this would work. That he would become the War Prince everyone wanted him to be but at the same time, he dreaded it. A War Prince wouldn't be a good friend, he didn't think. They were violent and cruel and Yoongi wasn't either of those things, even if he was learning to ride a hornet and spent his mornings learning to fight with Hoseok.

Taehyung smiled as he stood beside Yoongi and watched him breathe life back into a dying flower. “You're so good at this,” he said, watching as the wilted, whiting petals turned back to a blush pink, the crumpled leaves turning supple. “You've got the tongue.”

“The tongue?” Yoongi asked with a laugh.

“The silver tongue. And a natural affinity for magic most couldn't even _hope_ to possess. No wonder you're picking up so fast, you're _almost_ as good as me!” Yoongi smiled in response and Taehyung smiled back, reaching to ruffle Yoongi's hair. “I wouldn't be surprised if you could heal someone just by singing at them, soon!”

There was a moment of silence, before Yoongi spoke again.

“Can I kill someone this way, Taehyung?” he asked, and the hush that fell over the garden made Taehyung's hair stand on end. The idea was horrific, to be able to kill someone with just words. To be able to steal away a life with little more than a whisper. Yoongi's words already had power, but the idea of having that much power was just terrifying.

“I... Suppose you could, yes. I've never tried it, that's... Not my area of expertise. Though I've read that War Princes have been able to do such things in the past.” He was desperate not to talk about this. He didn't want to think about it, didn't want to think about sweet, pale Yoongi in leathers with war paint staining his face, didn't want to think about him with blood on his hands, under his pale fingernails.

“I am a War Prince.”

“Yes, you are.” Taehyung's voice dropped and Yoongi turned to look at him _,_ jerking about like he'd been struck and perhaps he had. Taehyung swallowed hard and looked down, ashamed for saying such a thing. He'd never said it before. Yoongi could be a War Prince to everyone else but to Taehyung he was just Yoongi, his student and friend, the little bellflower who, despite all of his reservations, was learning more than he'd ever thought he could.

But the hurt in Yoongi's face hurt his heart, and Taehyung knelt beside him, the sun bearing down on his bare back where his green wings fluttered softly. He took Yoongi's hands and kissed them, kissed each knuckle, the tops of his hands, the undersides of his wrists.

“I'm afraid,” Yoongi whispered, and Taehyung looked up at him through his hair and hated the way Yoongi looked like he had that first night, like he was going to fall to pieces.

“I am, too,” he whispered, and slowly the tangles of ivy started to grow over them, to hide them from prying eyes. “I am too, but Yoongi,” he said. “Yoongi. It's not bad, to be afraid. It's only bad if you let it pin you still.”

“I'm trying,” Yoongi whispered, and Taehyung nodded.

“I know you are.”

Taehyung kissed Yoongi slow and sweetly. They held one another, they pressed together in the shadows of the ivy and Taehyung's small wings spread out for Yoongi's hands. His wings spread, and his heart opened, and through the currents of magic running between them Taehyung felt it all: the fear, the desperation, the confusion and the love, so much love.

Taehyung understood what it was to make love, in that moment. Pressed chest-to-chest with Yoongi, straddled over his lap and twining his fingers into his hair, Taehyung understood love as Yoongi knew it: warm, encompassing, bright and eternal.

In the moss they laid on, tiny mayflowers bloomed.

~

Taehyung had known the time would come for him to be striped with war paint. He'd known and yet now, standing there on the morning of battle with Jimin, teary-eyed and furious, it felt even worse than he'd imagined. His best friends hands smeared the stain over his features, green and black and gold. His hands were covered in it as he turned away, unable to keep from crying.

“Jimin,” he said, desperate that the last image of his loved one not be of his tears, should it be his last image. He wanted to be able to recall Jimin's beautiful face in a smile, not distress. “Jimin, please.”

“What if you don't come back, Taehyung,” he whispered. “What if you... Yoongi, Hoseok, what if you don't come back? What will I do without you?”

“We'll come back,” he promised, bending to kiss Jimin's hands. “We will come back. I'll make sure of it. You know I won't let anything bad happen to them.”

“Or yourself,” Jimin said, and Taehyung nodded, took Jimin's desperate kiss for what it was—a plea, begging. When he pulled away his lips and face were black and green and gold.

“We'll all come back,” he promised. “We will.”

~

They almost didn't.

Taehyung had been frantically trying to keep Youngjae from bleeding out when he heard, felt, Yoongi's bellow across the field. _Witness me._ The magic pulsed and Youngjae's wound was closed. It pulsed again and he was getting up, staggering, holding his sword and Taehyung felt terror rip up his throat.

Such a huge force of magic could only mean Yoongi's life was in danger and he focused all of his senses on finding him, _finding him._ It took too long, and when he finally crashed down beside him, gathering the words in his teeth Yoongi's head was dropped back onto the shoulder of a sobbing youth, whose side was pressed to an iron pike, his hands holding it in place where it impaled Yoongi through the gut.

“Help,” the boy was sobbing. “Please, please help, he's dying, he's _dying._ ”

“Not if I have anything to do with it,” Taehyung snarled and reached out, gripped the wooden handle and _willed_ it to break. It snapped off cleanly and Yoongi's weight slumped back further into the boy, who cried out in pain. The iron pike was digging into his skin, the smell of burning flesh absolutely repulsive. “Get up, get up, get him up,” Taehyung said and the boy did as he was told, followed orders and Taehyung gripped the pike with both hands. “Hold him steady.”

“Yes,” he whimpered, and Taehyung _pulled._

The rest of it... The rest of it was blood and burning, and Taehyung clutching Yoongi and the boy to his chest. _You can't leave me. You can't leave me, you promised._

~

“Stay down,” Taehyung said, grinding the words out when he heard Yoongi move for the first time in three days and he didn't want to start screaming for joy because he wasn't dead, not from his horrendous wound or iron poisoning. “Don't try to get up. Your body is still trying to recover from the trauma.”

“The boy,” Yoongi said, sounding groggy. “The boy.”

“He's all right,” Taehyung murmured, sitting down beside him to offer a piece of orange. “Scared out of his mind, but he's all right. We managed to save most of his wings.”

“How many dead,” Yoongi asked, and Taehyung closed his eyes. Trust a War Prince to think of that as soon as he woke from a three-day slumber and physical trauma that would have killed most people. “How many dead.”

“...A hundred and seven. One hundred and seven, lost. Glory to the victorious dead.” Taehyung whispered.

“Hail.” Yoongi whispered. “Give me their names,” he said, and Taehyung could see the tears in the corner of his vision, could see the way his teeth dug into his lip.

“Later,” Taehyung said, bending to kiss Yoongi's cheek. His beloved, his friend, his precious, precious friend. “Later. When you're well, Yoongi. Not now.”

“Taehyung,” Yoongi croaked, and Taehyung turned back from where he'd been heading towards the door.

“Yes,” he asked, crouching back down to peek at Yoongi's face where it was half-buried in the blankets. “What is it?”

“Don't go,” he said. Taehyung smiled, leaned to kiss his lips, despite the effort it took to tuck his hand under Yoongi's head and lift it to kiss him. “Please.”

“I won't,” he promised easily. “I told Jeongguk I'd be here when you woke up.”

“Jeongguk,” Yoongi said.

“The boy,” Taehyung replied. “The boy you saved. His name is Jeongguk.”

“Ah.”

“He refused to leave you. It was a bit... Darling, if I'm honest. He spent the night with me here, said he didn't want to leave until he was sure you were all right.”

“He sounds like a child,” he laughed, and Taehyung nodded. Jeongguk had seemed much like a child, when he was in hysterics about the War Prince stepping between himself and an iron weapon. He'd caught a wound from it too, a terrible burn that would likely scar the skin beneath his ribs forever, but it was a small cost, to still be alive. He'd been so somber, when he'd come. His eyes dark and full of gratitude he couldn't express, or didn't know how to express.

“Perhaps,” Taehyung said. “Perhaps.” There was a moment of hesitation, and Yoongi started to shift up onto his hands. “Don't even think about it,” he warned. “If you'd been anyone else you'd be dead, Yoongi, do you understand me, you stay in that bed until I tell you to get up.”

“Don't talk to me that way,” Yoongi puffed up, as much as one could puff up while collapsing back down to a bed, wings attempting to flit. “I'm the War Prince.”

“You're my patient,” he said, and bent to kiss Yoongi's shoulder. “Get some rest.”

“All right,” Yoongi grumped, and Taehyung kissed him one more time. Just one more.

 


	9. the companion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which we learn jimin's story.

Jimin wasn't sure what he'd been expecting when he'd been informed that the War Prince had finally been wrangled back to Mistman's Wood. He wasn't sure what he was expecting but it certainly wasn't the short, skinny thing Seokjin was struggling to carry down the hallway. He jogged towards him, smiling handsomely.

“Help me,” Seokjin panted, and Jimin nodded, bent to pick Yoongi up out of Seokjin's arms. He felt very... Small. Almost helpless. He looked at Seokjin as he spoke, said nothing of the worry he saw there. It was unlike Seokjin to seem so flustered. “He needs to be undressed. Bathed, fed.”

“I'll take care of it,” he promised, offering his best smile to the Housemaster, who visibly relaxed at his reassurance. Of course he did. “You have other things to do, Sir, please. Let me take care of him for now.”

“Of course,” Seokjin sighed, running a hand through his hair and leaning to kiss Jimin sweetly on the corner of his mouth. “Thank you. I'll be by later, Jimin, be... Be careful.”

“I will,” Jimin chirped, carrying the War Prince—Yoongi—to the large and open bathroom, satisfied that the lighting wasn't too bright or invasive. Too much stress would probably make Yoongi feel even worse, and what was more relaxing than a hot bath in dim light? Nothing, in Jimin's opinion. Let Namjoon make fun if he wanted, but Jimin knew how to be good to himself and thus, he could be good to Yoongi.

“All right, I'm going to put you down.” He carefully set him down on the round curve of a large stone, letting him sit up by himself. “Get you undressed and cleaned up, mm? I bet it'll be nice to get out of these... Clothes? These are clothes, aren't they?” He took in the strange fabric, the odd shape. It was unlike anything he'd ever seen, and certainly more coarse than his own leathers, which were supple with age.

“I didn't realize humans wore such strange things... Oh, that's _bizarre,_ ” Jimin said, pulling down the odd, toothy closure on Yoongi's outer layer, pushing it off his shoulders. He wasn't surprised that the War Prince was non-responsive, though he rather wished he was. It was odd to be speaking and get no response. Even Namjoon graced him with replies, even if they were monosyllabic and sometimes very annoyed.

“I'm so glad you're here,” he continued, pulling the shirt up over Yoongi's head, his lank hair. He tried not to make a face at the state of him, but Taehyung had said he'd chased the skinny thing through the woods, so of course he was sweaty and dirty. It was good that he was home, safe, able to be taken care of properly instead of out in the woods running amok at such a dangerous time. Jimin had already lectured Taehyung rather harshly (as had Seokjin) about the dangers of running off on his own, when things with Winter's Rest were so damned dangerous.

“Everyone was so worried the Oberon would reject you. He's been so furious, after all... The ones he sent out to find you, they've been looking for a baby all this time. A _baby._ As though you haven't aged at all in the last eighteen years! Ridiculous.”

He was babbling now, uncomfortable with the unnatural silence. But as he brought up a wet hand to push back Yoongi's hair all he could see was his sudden, heavy tears. “Sir? Sir, are you all right?”

Eyes wide with alarm Jimin grabbed onto Yoongi's shoulders to keep him from slipping down into the water while he sobbed hysterically like an abandoned mouse kit. Jimin had no idea what he was so upset about but the ferocity of the emotion was terrifying, and the bruises Yoongi was digging into his arms were unlikely to fade quickly.

Yoongi seemed completely out of touch as Jimin fed him soft drops of honeysuckle jelly. Jimin kept his mouth shut and when Yoongi turned his head away from more food he carried him to bed, humming under his breath. He tucked him in, felt a well of affection for the way Yoongi furrowed his brow and opened his mouth to speak, but did not.

“We've got a lot to do tomorrow, sir, so... So please get some rest, all right? Sleep well. May your dreams be peaceful.” Jimin kissed Yoongi's forehead and lingered, just to feel the closeness. Yoongi should feel safe. Cared for.

“Night,” Yoongi mumbled, and Jimin laughed.

“Goodnight, Sir.”

~

“Sir? Sir, wake up.”

“Mmm.” Yoongi twisted away and Jimin laughed, reaching to pull at the blankets the same way he'd wake a particularly moody child.

“Sir. Yoongi. War Prince to the Western Fae of the Mistman's Wood. Yoongi, wake up.”

“Go away,” Yoongi said, his voice hard and rasping with sleep. “This is a fucking dream. There's no such thing as faeries.”

_No such thing as faeries?_

Jimin felt his entire body contract, all of his muscles burning, His hands squeezed and went loose as he toppled from the bed, unable to breathe, to move, to _think._ He'd heard of this—being too close to the human world, heaving such things could kill a faerie, and sometimes if the thought was hard enough one of them could just fall down dead without having to be near the source of it at all.

_No such thing as faeries._

That was what had happened to Jimin's bloom companion. They'd been born at the same time, out of the same overgrown tangle of tearoses and his companion hadn't made it past unfurling his wings before he turned white and died. They'd been too close to the human world, there. Jimin hadn't been back since.

He'd never thought someone of his own kind would have such terrible power.

He was going to die.

He dug his fingers into the stone, gripped his throat when no air would pass through, his wings spasming and heaving. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't _breathe_ , and as Yoongi dragged him up from the floor into his lap all he could think of was the way he'd cried the night before, the way he'd fallen asleep with his hands over his face and perhaps this was punishment for everything being done all wrong.

Yoongi smelled crisp and clean as he held Jimin against his chest, gripped him tight and spoke in a hard and terrified whisper. “I do believe in faeries,” he said, his voice ragged and it occurred to Jimin, through his own panic, that Yoongi had no idea what he'd done or said, just then. No idea at all. “I do believe in faeries, I do, I do believe in faeries—”

The longer Yoongi chanted his mantra the more Jimin's body reacted to the magic, to the positive call. _I do believe._ It was so easy for negative magic to make itself known; it was much more work to keep the positive thoughts and spells alive, especially for one like Yoongi, who clearly had no idea of how to even work a spell proper. Jimin felt something dangerously close to pity as he put his hands on Yoongi's biceps and relaxed against his body, clinging carefully, afraid to fall.

“God I'm sorry, I'm sorry, are you okay, I didn't—shit I'm sorry, I didn't mean that, I swear I didn't—”

His voice was weak and Jimin's heart ached just like his body did. “M'fine,” he said, feeling shivery and feverish. “M'all right.”

“God,” Yoongi said, and Jimin felt another pulse of magic, though it was not directed at him. Yoongi held him at arms length and Jimin reached to touch his face.

“Sir?” Jimin asked quietly, and Yoongi flinched. “Sir. It was an accident.”

“I know what I said, I damn well know what I said.”

“You didn't mean it,” Jimin replied, knowing the words to be true. He'd studied magic with Taehyung, he knew what he spoke of. “Otherwise I'd be dead on the floor right now.” Yoongi's hands loosened and Jimin's came up to hold them, comforting. “Words have power, but only if there is feeling behind them. You didn't mean it. It's all right. It's all right, Yoongi.”

Yoongi closed his eyes and Jimin felt his heart break just a little bit more.

~

It took far longer than it should have, but eventually Jimin got Yoongi up, dragged him out of the bed and his self-hate. Got him dressed in proper clothes that fit like a glove; leathers, boots, a tunic shirt with a neck-hole far too wide. It slipped from one shoulder, exposed the top of it beneath his vest and Jimin did his best not to stare at the soft white peek of skin, pursing his lips and willing himself to look away. He walked Yoongi out into the hall, spoke nonsense to avoid having to think about Yoongi's breath in his hair, the way he'd reversed his words immediately, the way he'd cried as he fell asleep.

“...and Taehyung is a shaman, though he also tends to stay close to the Greenland. You've already met Seokjin, of course, he makes sure things run smoothly here. Hoseok is our quartermaster, you'll meet him later today.”

“What about Oberon,” Yoongi asked.

“Oh,” Jimin pursed his lips and shrugged. He didn't interact much with the leader of their realm. He was only interested in the powerful and Jimin, while quite strong, was not the right kind of strong to attract his attention. “He doesn't come here very often. He only came because he knew you were here. His business keeps to the Rosegully proper.”

“Rosegully?”

“The capital,” Jimin replied. “We're closer to the black forest here, since we're to the west.”

“I feel like I should be taking notes,” Yoongi said, and Jimin laughed. “What.”

“You don't need to,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “After all, you're going home when this is over, right? Back to the human world.”

“I can do that?” Yoongi asked, perking up almost immediately. Jimin's chest hurt a little, that Yoongi was so eager, though he supposed he couldn't really blame him. “I can go home?”

“I... Believe so?” Jimin said, though honestly he wasn't sure. He'd talk to Namjoon about it later, about the hows and whyfors. It wouldn't make sense, but he wanted it explained to him anyway. “I don't see why you can't. You were brought here, so presumably... You can go back the way you came?”

The sparkle of hope made Yoongi's face relax and Jimin smiled at him, shook his hair from his eyes. “This way. I want you to meet Hoseok.”

“Quartermaster. Right. What's he do?”

“He's in charge of the stables,” Jimin said, leading him down a set of stairs. “Also the armory. He made your halberd especially for you. Didn't you wonder why it felt so natural in your hand, why you knew how to use it? It was crafted for you specifically. No one else can wield it.”

“What? How, when?”

“Oh, when you were very young. Before you were lost, he made that for you.”

“Lost? I was lost?”

“Yes,” Jimin pursed his lips together. “But I know very little of that. Namjoon would be able to tell you more.”

“Namjoon.”

“Our record-keeper, here at the Greenland. Seokjin will take you to meet him later, no doubt.”

~

“He could have killed you,” Namjoon said, and Jimin shook his head.

“But he didn't.”

“He _could have._ ”

“But he _didn't,_ Namjoon, I'm not having this argument with you!” Jimin's wings flared in agitation and Namjoon clicked his tongue, lip pulled into a sneer. “Stop that. Stop it, you know he's afraid. I don't think he even knew what would happen if he said that.”

“Oh, I'm sure he didn't.”

“Namjoon,” Jimin said, and the record-keeper turned to look at him, stalk towards him, fist a hand in his hair and Jimin let him, bracing his hand around Namjoon's thin waist and equally thin wrist, his grip crushingly strong. “Namjoon. Don't be like this. He didn't do it on purpose.”

“But soon he will be able to,” Namjoon said, and the hand in his hair loosened, was joined by another, and Jimin felt the shelves at his back, his wings crushed against them as Namjoon crowded his front. “Soon he'll be able to kill anything he chooses with a word, and then what will I do if he dares speak those words?”

“He will not,” Jimin replied, and he reached up to tuck back the wild mess of Namjoon's hair. “He will not. Please, Namjoon. I don't want to argue. I didn't come here to argue.”

“You never do,” Namjoon admitted, and Jimin took great relief and pleasure in stretching his neck up while Namjoon bent down to kiss him. Namjoon's tall, skinny body crowded him against the shelf and Jimin kissed him breathless, sucked at his neck, dragged him to the nest near the fireplace and laid him down. In the firelight Namjoon and Jimin melted together and as Jimin gasped out Namjoon's name, raked his fingers down between those beautiful wings, he distantly wondered what it would be like to do this with Yoongi; to pin the War Prince beneath him and lay perfect claim.

~

The day before Yoongi left to make for the pass where his army would meet the fae of Winter's Rest, it was determined that Jimin and Namjoon would not join them on the battlefield. Jimin could barely think around the awful lump of hurt in his belly, and he avoided seeing Yoongi for as long as he could. Namjoon hadn't thought twice of it but the idea that Yoongi was going to go into battle alone, was going to face the Winter's Rest without him, was _intolerable._

He had refused to touch, look at, or speak to Yoongi for the entirety of the day. He was furious, his wings arched out wide with agitation, flared to make himself seem larger and more threatening and he wished more than anything that it would work, but Yoongi was too human to know any better and he rather hated him for it, as Yoongi cornered him in the garden and he jerked around to face him at the sound of his name.

“Jimin,” Yoongi said, having finally cornered him in a quiet part of the garden. When there was nowhere else to run, he turned to shove Yoongi hard, __get away from me,__ twice, __leave me alone,__ he tried for a third __how dare you,__ but was unable to muster the strength, collapsing to his knees with his head bowed. It wasn't right. It wasn't _fair._ “Jimin,” Yoongi tried again.

“Why won't you let me go with you,” he asked, choking on his own words, so full of sadness and desperation he felt he would drown in it. “Namjoon... I understand, he's a scholar, not a warrior. I'm a fighter, you know I am, please, let me go with you,” he looked up and fisted his hands tightly in Yoongi's leathers, baring his teeth. “Do not leave me here to wait for your return.”

“I need you here,” he said, kneeling in front of Jimin, cupping his face. Jimin wanted to rip him to pieces, felt fury and agony in equal parts warring in his chest. “I need you here, Jimin, to make sure nothing happens.”

“Leave that to Seokjin,” Jimin almost shouted, one fist slamming hard into Yoongi's bicep. To make sure nothing happens, that— “That is his duty! It is mine to be by your side, Yoongi, it is my task to catch you if you f—” his voice died in his throat as he imagined Yoongi dead on the battlefield, his pale skin dull and lifeless, his blue eyes dark with the light of his life snatched away by an errant arrow, a furious spell. Jimin was meant to be there. He was his manservant, his confidante. He was meant to be there with him.

“I will not fall,” Yoongi said. He pressed his cheek to Jimin's hair and dragged him close, though it brought Jimin no warmth or comfort. Just the cold feeling of knowing there was nothing he could do or say to make Yoongi change his mind. Just the heavy knowledge that Yoongi was going out into the field without him and if he didn't come back, Jimin would crack into pieces.

“I will not fall, Jimin. I will come back to you.” Jimin wanted those words to be true. More than anything. Over the course of the few months Yoongi had been with them he'd grown... Irrevocably attached and what he wanted more than for Yoongi to come back, was for Yoongi not to leave at all.

“I will come back.”

“You don't know that,” Jimin whispered, losing the battle with his tears. “You don't __know that.__ ”

“I will do everything in my power,” he replied. It wasn't good enough. No promise was good enough, would ever be good enough and yet he craved it anyway, because... Because if Yoongi didn't come back, he wanted to hold that promise to his chest until the end of his own days, whether it be sooner or later. “Everything. I will come home.”

“Promise me,” Jimin said, pulling back just enough to look at Yoongi's face, eyes swollen and red, he could feel it. “Promise me you will come to me when you return.”

“If you're not waiting for me at the gate,” Yoongi replied, holding Jimin's face in his fingers and kissing him sweetly. “I will come to you. I will come home, to you.”

“Yoongi,” he said softly, leaning closer, holding his breath, letting it go when Yoongi kissed him, pulled him in. Jimin discovered what it was like, that night, to be close to his War Prince. He memorized every detail; the gasp of his breath, the arch of his back and the way their bodies slotted perfectly together. The taste of his mouth, the feeling of Yoongi's small waist being crushed and bruised beneath Jimin's own hands. He fought to keep it all and in the morning, when he woke alone in the misty half-sunlight, he laid in his bed and wept into the smell of Yoongi's skin in his sheets.

~

There was no time for mourning. Just a half-day after they'd seen Yoongi off, they were attacked. Most of their capable warriors were gone and it was just Jimin there to defend their home. He stood alone. His tri-bladed katars were fearsome, laced with magic as Hoseok had intended them to be when he'd made them, but there were so many of them, the warriors from Winter's Rest, and only one of him.

By the time Namjoon and Seokjin had come to help, Jimin couldn't feel his left side, knew distantly that his wing was dangling, broken, and that he was losing blood faster than he could breathe. He was surrounded by bodies and everything smelled light and floral. Everything was splashed with color, including the vibrant gold that spilled down over his own clothes.

It was Seokjin who caught him as he finally fell. Beyond that, he could recall nothing; just the ferocious slice of blade through air, the rip of hair and breaking bones.

~

_I'll never fly again,_ he'd said, trying to laugh when Yoongi stared at him in unchecked horror, having finally seen the horrid rip in his wing, the scars where the stitches had done their best to make sure he survived. _It's a good thing I've been training that dragonfly, huh?_

Jimin didn't cry until Yoongi grabbed him and pulled him in. He didn't cry until Yoongi pressed his hands to his back and kissed him all over his face and neck.

_Of course you will,_ he said, and Jimin wanted to believe him. He did.

Jimin wanted, more than anything, to believe that what Yoongi said was true. He was his War Prince. He was his lover. He wanted to believe in him and the thought that he couldn't, that Yoongi would soon be turning his back on them and leaving, broke his heart almost more than the dull ache that would always pull at his shoulder. He couldn't stop thinking of their conversation: 

_After all, you're going home when this is over, right? Back to the human world._

_I can go home?_

 

 

 

_...aren't you already home?_

(he wanted him to stay.)

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is abysmal, and i'm sorry @_@ jimin deserves better. i'll probably come back and edit this a bit more, but i've been fighting with it for days and i just wanted it out of the way.


	10. the boy.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which we learn about jeongguk.

Jeongguk wasn't anything special. He was handy with his chosen weapons, he was thin and flexible, but he certainly wasn't better than any others, any of the others there on the battlefield, their wings shivering with nerves. He'd come because it was the right thing to do; because he'd been there to see Yoongi spit in the face of the Oberon and felt his entire world shrink to the knowledge that if one man could be so brave, so fearless, than so could he. He could be brave for his sake and when Yoongi had put out the call he'd gone willingly. Put down his gardening shears and picked up the war blades, the giant scissors in two pieces, one blade in each hand. He was painted, a white handprint on his face and a smear of green on his mouth, and he listened to the words Yoongi spoke, nearly whispered into his ear as he readied them or the fight.

“We are the balance,” he said, and Jeongguk believed him. “We are all that stands between the Winter's Rest and a world of white. You are brave. Strong. Stand tall. I believe in you.”

~

He hadn't known he was capable of such brutality. It horrified and pleased him, the splatters of blood and the slice of his weapons through the air, sharp enough to split hairs. He hadn't thought himself capable of such awful, awful ruin, not when he tended a garden, quiet at the edge of the city proper. He hadn't known what a monster he could be.

He snapped the blades closed as Yoongi shouted, eyes finding him and the clearest path to him, the rain soaking his hair and wings.

 _To me,_ Yoongi had shouted, and Jeongguk did as he should. He went. He could feel the power radiating off of the War Prince, could feel the surge of strength through his body.

“Heal, my brothers,” Yoongi called, and Jeongguk felt the ache and sharp agony in his thigh dissipate into nothing, felt the burning in his left elbow fading. “My sons, my warriors! Heal and be strong. The battle is not over, not yet won. But you are strong.”

Words have power.

“You are strong! And I believe in you!”

_He believes in us._

_We can win._

“To victory!”

_He is my prince, and I will follow him._

Yoongi's words echoed across the fighting as Jeongguk flung himself headlong into the enemy in their pale leathers, their blonde hair and shining weapons. He snapped the blades, stabbed them forward, ripped them free and when the pike shoved through his shoulder he screamed in alarm and pain, throwing himself to the ground and jerking around, feeling his skin _burn,_ feeling it _sizzle_ with the contact from the iron tip of the weapon the seelie was levelling down at him.

 _Oh,_ he swallowed hard and tried to brace himself for the blow he knew was coming. The seelie was grinning down at him, and Jeongguk's vision was starting to split out of focus.

“Cry for your mother, welp,” he could barely hear the voice through the thunderous rain. “If you even have one.” The warrior stood tall and broad and Jeongguk knew he was going to die. Already, he could feel the iron poisoning working it's way through his shoulder. He couldn't move. At that distance, there was no way he'd be able to get out of the way if the man shoved the pike forward and it would drive right through his belly.

He watched his own silver-blue blood drip from the end of the pike and wondered who was going to look over his garden, when he didn't come back. Perhaps it would become overgrown. Maybe they would leave it as a tangle of weeds and briars in remembrance of those who had died this day.

The pike drew back. Jeongguk flinched down and wished he could have at least survived long enough to see Yoongi glowing with pride in their victory, the way he deserved to.

But instead of the weapon burying itself in him he felt a body against his own and the iron tip against his chestplate. He felt weight fell into him and after a moment of confusion his heart stopped, his breath in his lungs.

Yoongi.

Yoongi, his war prince, stood between him and the pike. It pierced him all the way through, right in the weak part of his armor and Jeongguk could hear nothing, see nothing except for Yoongi and the pike and the seelie, grinning down at them. Someone was screaming. Maybe it was him. Someone was crying. Maybe it was him.

“Some war prince you are,” the seelie snarled. “To think this pathetic, useless child worth saving.”

Jeongguk watched as Yoongi grabbed the pike and yanked it in. Watched the tip shove out, heard Yoongi yelling but it all happened so quickly; it all happened so quickly and Yoongi was falling, falling backward and Jeongguk jerked up to catch him, gasping in breathless pain when the pike pierced into his side and Yoongi's shoulders split open, the skin cracking and pulling apart.

Everything was muffled.

“My Lord,” Jeongguk tried to get out, unable to hear himself. “My—War Prince, please, stay with me, help is coming, they're coming, please—” The pike pierced through Yoongi and into him and Yoongi looked down at it, one hand still gripping the wood. “Oh god, oh god it's iron, the tip is iron, don't touch it—” Jeongguk cried, struggled to keep Yoongi from bleeding out, his hands pressed to the wooden shaft of the pike.

“Don't cry,” Yoongi whispered, and Jeongguk nodded his head, the press of new, wet wings and the cold fall of rain and the taste of blood in his mouth, blue, unlike the shimmering pink that spit from Yoongi's lips as he spoke. “Don't cry. Have faith.”

“Yes, War Prince,” he sobbed, rocked the two of them in a vain attempt to comfort himself, the pike digging in a little more with every movement.

It was an eternity before someone came to them and Jeongguk couldn't make words, couldn't _think._ “Help,” he was sobbing. “Please, please help, he's dying, he's _dying._ ”

“Not if I have anything to do with it,” the shaman snarled, and suddenly Yoongi's weight dropped back and Jeongguk shouted, fingernails digging into Yoongi's arms. All he could smell was blood and burning flesh. “Get up, get up, get him up,” the man was saying, and Jeongguk needed to follow orders, he had to, because he was going to fall to pieces otherwise—“Hold him steady.”

“Yes,” he whimpered, and the shaman pulled the pike free.

Jeongguk fell back to the field and stared up at the grey blanket of clouds, felt himself getting pulled up and into a warm pair of arms. Everything after that was a dream.

~

Jeongguk woke beneath a heavy blanket, felt like his entire body was made of stone. When he tried to push himself up, someone pushed him back down. The shaman.

“Stay there,” he said, his voice surprisingly tender. Jeongguk blinked at him, disoriented. “You're still recovering.”

“Yoongi,” he whispered, and the shaman laughed, nodded.

“He's fine. Some magic he's got, huh? Saved you, too. Otherwise, mm.” the shaman's hand touched Jeongguk's belly. “Otherwise you'd be dead.”

“What happened,” he asked, and closed his eyes when the shaman bent to kiss his forehead, push back his hair. “Wh...”

“It doesn't matter now,” he said, and Jeongguk swallowed hard. “What matters is that you made it. You'll be all right in a few days, Jeongguk. But for now I want you to stay in that bed and rest.” Jeongguk nodded, settled back and felt his eyes starting to cross with exhaustion. “Aah. Sleep tight, little one.”

And Jeongguk slept. He slept.

~

Once he was well enough to get out of bed, he spent much of his time at Yoongi's bedside, feeling solely responsible for what happened. If Yoongi hadn't leapt between Jeongguk and his opponent, if he hadn't gotten between Jeongguk and that pike, he'd be all right.

“Don't blame yourself,” Taehyung insisted, and Jeongguk looked down at the floor, felt Taehyung's soft lips on his shoulder. His easy affection was something Jeongguk welcomed. “He'll be all right. He just takes a while to heal.”

“It's my fault,” he whispered, and Taehyung laughed.

“It's his own fault. He's a leader. That's what leaders do, perform ridiculous acts of self-sacrifice in the heat of the moment and survive.”

“He saved me.”

“You are worth saving.”

~

“Jeongguk,” Yoongi said, and Jeongguk jerked up, eyes wide in alarm as he clutched at his chest in surprise. Yoongi did that often: surprised him enough to make his heart stop.

“My Lord,” he said, and reached to help Yoongi sit up as he made the motions to do so himself, even though he wasn't supposed to. “Careful,” Jeongguk said, leaning forward to reach and steady him by the shoulders. “Careful. Taehyung said your wings are still uncurling, you have to be gentle with them.”

“My wings,” Yoongi said, and Jeongguk nodded, his own silver wings fluttering a bit.

“They're beautiful,” he murmured, and Yoongi gave him a smile, dashing and roguish and Jeongguk's breath caught in his throat.

“Of course they are.”

~

When he was called to Yoongi's quarters, Jeongguk brought a basket of berries with him. He offered them out, feeling sheepish as Yoongi motioned him inside and told him to make himself comfortable. “My Lord,” he said, and Yoongi reached to touch his lips.

“Enough of that,” he said, and Jeongguk felt his heart stop in his chest. “Enough of that, Jeongguk. Come here. I never did thank you properly for stay with me, did I. When we were on the field.” He was moving closer and Jeongguk's heart was somewhere in his throat, blocking his ability to speak.

“My L... Yoongi?”

Yoongi's lips were soft, and Jeongguk all but melted into him when they kissed. He was weak, he'd always been weak, but Yoongi guided him down into the sheets and held him there, sucked the breath from his lungs with his lips. When his wings flared out, his head thrown back as he held on to Jeongguk's hips, as his lips kissed the scarred skin of his shoulder where the pike had impaled him, Jeongguk was sure he'd never seen anything more beautiful in his entire existence.

When Yoongi finished, when he finished Jeongguk not once but twice, the two of them stayed in his bed and shared strawberries and kisses. When Taehyung joined them, he tasted somehow like the color green, and Jeongguk had never felt quite so desperately wanted.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> his chapter feels short, huh? that's because the more important things come after.   
> as always, thanks for reading guys. i can't even tell you how good it feels to know you're enjoying the story.


	11. a smooth blue stone.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> yoongi faces the choice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ow ow ow

“The Oberon, War Prince,” Seokjin said softly as he stepped out of the doorway. Yoongi had been back in his own quarters for nearly seven days, and he wasn't surprised that the Oberon was coming to see him. He'd been successful in his battle as well; the forces at the northern edge of the Mistman's Wood had been all but slaughtered. Yoongi was fearsome, but the Oberon was _experienced._ He knew what he was doing, and Yoongi was rather bitter that he hadn't been... More prepared. Taught better. One hundred and seven.

“Come in,” he said, navigating easily through the breezy room, motioning for the Oberon to take a seat near to the unlit fireplace. “To what do I owe your presence?”

“I've come to uphold my end of the deal, War Prince,” he said, and Yoongi frowned, the expression delicate on his face.

“Deal,” Yoongi repeated.

“Yes,” the Oberon replied, settling into the chair and crossing his legs. He looked every inch the reveler he had been when Yoongi had first taken his place in the court proper, and he couldn't help but smile, remembering how he'd spit in his face in an act of defiance and how the Oberon had just grinned that wicked grin back at him. It was a strange and comforting sight, though something niggled in the back of his head that he could not place. A sound, or a smell. The familiarity was just out of reach. “My end of the deal. It was promised that once you had won this war, you could go home,”

“I am home,” Yoongi said, at the same time the Oberon spoke,

“To the human world and the mother that awaits you there.”

“Mother?” Yoongi asked. He pursed his lips and slowly shook his head. “I remember no such thing. Besides that we don't have mothers, Oberon.”

“Jiho,” the Oberon said. “You should call me Jiho.”

“Jiho, then,” Yoongi replied. “I've no memory of this promise, or this _mother._ So again I must ask, to what do I owe the pleasure of your company.”

The Oberon—Jiho. Looked at Yoongi with his single dark eye, his single light eye and reached out for his hand. Yoongi offered it, his fingernails a deep and beautiful blue at the root, turning clear the further up they went until they reached the edge where they turned sharp. Fae claws. Fae claws, to match the wings sprouting from his back, the hair on his head.

“Your mother,” he said slowly, his words weaving a spell. “Min Jieun.”

“I do not know that name,” he confessed, though the magic was tracing over his skin and into his hair, against his nose in a memory that he couldn't quite grasp. Something he'd forgotten, something important. Someone. The smell of flowers, and the sound of rain against tarmac. The rusted steel beams of a human-made bridge, the bellflower cradle he'd been lifted from.

“Remember.”

~

“Yoongiyah,” his mother said softly on one dark, moonless night in March. She was wearing a t-shirt and sweatpants, her hair in a braid over one shoulder as she tucked her hands into the pockets of her open hoodie. She looked radiant, as always. “I need to talk to you.”

“Yeah Ma,” he said, sliding into a kitchen chair. He'd been intending to go out with his friends—it was his eighteenth birthday, but it wasn't quite time for him to leave yet. “What's up? I promise I already arranged for cab to bring me home later.” He knew she worried about that kind of thing. She always worried when he went somewhere, as though she expected him to be kidnapped or something, even though he was old enough to take care of himself, and then some.

“It's not that, Yoongiyah,” she laughed, reaching to tuck back a lock of his messy black hair. She looked at him with such affection, such desperate love, that Yoongi felt his chest tighten. Most of his friends didn't get on with their mothers, but Yoongi's mom loved him and he loved her. She called him her little miracle and he thought he was lucky, damned lucky indeed, to be able to have her there to help him when he stumbled and fell.

“Ma?” he asked, feeling fear creep up his veins. She sounded so... Wrong. “Ma, what's wrong?”

“Nothing, sweetheart,” she said, shrugging helplessly and offered her arms out to him, not quite expectant. “I'm just... I'm glad you were born. And I'm glad you're mine, my little rainbaby.”

“ _Ma_ ,” he complained, but went into her arms and she pulled him in and kissed his hair, smoothed her hands down his back and up his arms.

“I love you, sweetheart,” she said, and Yoongi blushed to hear it, like he always did.

“Love you more, Ma. Tell Dad I'll see him in the morning, okay?”

“Of course,” she nodded, and Yoongi pretended not to see the tight knit of her brow when he slipped out of the house.

_~_

“ _Oh,”_ Yoongi whispered into the still air. Jiho looked at him cupped his jaw. He looked... Soft, in a way Yoongi nearly couldn't comprehend. “Oh.”

“You must know,” Jiho said. “That if you go back, there's no guarantee you will still have a place there. The world deformed itself around you, Yoongi. I can't even promise that she'll remember who you are.”

“She... She will. I'm her son, right?”

“It's not that simple,” Jiho said, and Yoongi was shaking his head violently, one hand coming up to tear at his hair. “Stop that.”

“It's—how can I—you can't—”

It took long minutes for Yoongi to be able to put together the words to say, _you can't make me do this,_ but he wasn't sure what he was protesting. Everything was sweeping over him like an incoming tide. He could go back. He could go home, it was all he'd wanted since he'd come here, all he'd wanted was to go home to Daegu, his parents and his friends, the world he knew and loved and yet...

And yet here there was Seokjin, Jimin and Taehyung. Jeongguk and Hoseok and Namjoon. Here was a life he'd built from a skeletal form, proof that he could, that he'd survived, that he was strong and resilient and capable, but there... There was his family, his mother. The woman who had lifted him up from under a bridge on a cold night and called him her _rainbaby._

“You can't expect me to,” he started, panting, unsure of when he'd fallen to his knees. Jiho was kneeling in front of him. “I can't.”

“You can, and you must, you're running out of time. The change is nearly complete, soon you won't be able to cross back over, Yoongi. If you're going to go, you must go now.”

“I can't,” he whispered, feeling his throat tighten, thinking of Jimin, _you can't leave me,_ and Hoseok, who waited for him to use the weapon he'd made. “I'm... It's.”

“I'll give you a day,” Jiho said, standing up. “After that, you won't be able to go. Remember that if you go, you won't be able to come back.”

“What kind of choice is that,” Yoongi asked, clutching at his chest with one hand, weight braced forward on the other. “What kind of _choice—_ ”

“Life is unkind, War Prince. Min Yoongi. Now is the time to choose.”

Jiho faded out into nothing and Yoongi was left on the floor of his room, holding his chest where it hurt the most, watching the floor warp and shift with the tears he blinked away. He'd hated crying, when he was human. Thought it made him weak, but now...

The thought of being discovered was unbearable. Not because he didn't want someone to see him crying but because he didn't want anyone to ask him what had happened, where he was going. He threw himself from the window, braced his wings for an easy glide and fall down to the path outside the garden and once there, he did what he always did when he was afraid:

He ran.

~

_As I write this, the War Prince is on his way to the human world. It has been an incredible time, with him at the helm of our people. He is brave, strong and fierce yet he is also soft, compassionate and fair. I must admit I had my doubts. When he first came to us, so afraid and weak and human, I thought there was no way he would be able to handle what we expected of him._

_He proved me wrong at every turn._

_He came to me last night. He'd been out... I don't know. He was a mess, but all he wanted to talk to me about was whether or not he could get back here, where were the texts, where were the rules. He was a man possessed, until early this morning, when I all but begged him to come and sleep and he finally, finally did._

_He had been with every member of the palace staff, save me._

_Likely because I was stubborn, and still angry about what he said to Jimin that first night but it seems like so long ago. It was so long ago and he seemed so frantic, desperate to be able to reconcile what he knew to be his human self with his true self. The human magic has been fading away. His claws have come in. His hair is dark blue at the root. He is beautiful._

_He is beautiful and this morning, in the pink light of dawn he proved to me just how beautiful he is, how soft, how loving. He said he was sorry. He held my wings and kissed me as few have ever dared. I knew I'd grown a bit attached to him, but watching him leave—watching him move out into the hall to the portal where he can fall back into the human world I felt such loss. Such wretched, wretched loss._

_I am the record-keeper. I am the scholar, and I told him what he wanted to know, what he didn't want to hear, but doesn't that just make it even more my fault? What will Jimin do, when he realizes Yoongi is gone? What about Hoseok, or Jeongguk, who love him so passionately?_

_I told him what he wanted to know, I gave him wings to free himself._

_But I feel as though I've cut off my arm. I can hear Jimin now, coming down the hallway. I hope he forgives m_

_~_

When Jimin threw open the door to Namjoon's sanctuary, the library where he worked and slept, he was more than ready to lose his temper, he was more than ready to slam Namjoon into a wall and break open the skin of his skull but what he saw when he entered gave him pause.

Namjoon stood over his record-book, his quill in hand, his lips open. They were chapped, swollen, and his neck bore the marks of sex. His shoulders and his arms were bruised.

“Namjoon,” Jimin breathed, and Namjoon just shook his head, shook his head and slipped down to the floor and Jimin went to him, knelt beside him and kissed his face, his hair. Jimin said nothing as Namjoon rocked back and forth, the only thing he could speak, _he's gone, he's gone, he's gone_

_what have I done?_

~

Yoongi stood on the other side of the portal. Namjoon had said he had a day. Twenty-four mortal hours and that was all. After that the portal would close and Yoongi... He had to decide which side of it he was standing on.

The moonstone around his throat had never felt so heavy as it did then. The echo of the kiss Namjoon had pressed over it, _for luck,_ he'd said as he cupped Yoongi's shoulders. Yoongi felt himself take a step back but no. _No,_ he had to go to Min Jieun. He had to go to his mother.

Daegu seemed the same, though everything was moving slowly to his wild eyes. The hoodie he'd been taken in felt small and constricting with it's hood pulled over his head. The jeans were tight over the muscles of his legs. Everything felt as though it had been moved two inches to the left, it was wrong.

He came to his mother's house, when the clouds started to rumble, and he found the irony agonizing as he knocked softly on the door, knocked as loud as he dared, afraid of either possibility: That she would remember him and beg him to stay, or she would not, and he would leave. Neither seemed like something his heart could tolerate.

The door cracked open, and a boy looked up at him. A young boy, perhaps eight, who blinked and then called over his shoulder, “Mom! Someone's here!”

_Mom?_

Yoongi stepped back from the door and felt his eyes starting to well and she wasn't even at the door yet. She wasn't even at the door, he hadn't even seen her—

Then there she was, with her dark hair streaked in silver braided over her shoulder, in a tank top and jeans, looking radiant as she always had. There were glasses on her nose now, and crows feet in the corner of her eyes and no recognition when she saw him.

“Can I help you?”

“I,” he started, and he choked on the words. “S. Sorry, sorry, wrong house, I'm, I'll—sorry about that,” he was staggering backwards, arms braced out for balance, oh god, she didn't know who he was. She didn't know who he was, he'd been _replaced—_

“Are you all right?” she asked, and her voice was nothing but polite concern. “Jihoonah, go and get a bottle of water, please?”

“Ne~” the boy said, jogging back into the house, past the counter and around to the fridge with the broken bottom drawer, to pull a water bottle out of the second shelf and bring it back to where Yoongi stood frozen, unable to breathe. “Ah, hyung! Here you go!”

The cold bottle in his hand forced Yoongi back to reality and he smiled, though it was hollow. He tried very hard. “Aah,” he said, swallowing hard. “Aah, I'm sorry for inconveniencing you, I guess I'm dehydrated and lost, not just lost. Thanks,” he held the water bottle and stood there stupidly.

“Are you going to be all right?” she asked, and Yoongi nodded, jerking his head like it was a stone on a string.

“Yes, yes, thank you. I'm sorry for disturbing you, I'll go now.”

He moved back down the steps towards the teal gate, slipped through it and felt his arm rip against the short side and if he was bleeding he didn't care, he just had to run, had to _run_.

There were drips of fire opal on the gate, and streaming down his forearm.

~

Yoongi found himself at the bridge with an unopened bottle of water and a sweatshirt sleeve sticking to the coagulated blood on his arm. The bridge where Min Jieun had found a crying fae child and picked him up, called him _rainbaby_ and named him Yoongi. Who knew what his name had been before that... Namjoon hadn't even known. _You were too young to be named, then,_ he'd said.

He felt his breath catch in his lungs as he pulled himself a little tighter under the bridge and fisted his hands in the sleeves of his hoodie, his knees pulled up to his chest. His gaze couldn't hold still, darting this way and that as though he was expecting an attack.

_She doesn't remember me._

_Min Jieun is my mother, and she doesn't remember me._

Namjoon had warned him of the possibility: _she might not remember you, Yoongi. Please. Please be careful._ But had he listened? No. He should have just stayed, he never should have come back but he'd needed the closure, he'd needed to know that she was all right, that she wasn't hurting but she'd had a child, she'd had a child named Jihoon and he'd been _replaced_ and _forgotten—_

_I want to go home_

_(but where is home, now?)_

_~_

“Rainbaby,” came her voice, and Yoongi hadn't realized he was crying until he stopped. He hadn't realized his body had been heaving with sobs until it started aching. He hadn't realized how he'd been drenched with rain until an umbrella was held over his head. “Rainbaby, what are you doing out here?”

“Mom,” he sobbed, struggling to get up, to reach for her, and she was just as warm as he remembered, her grip just as tight as the umbrella dropped and she embraced him in the rain, kissed his face and his hair, smoothed it back and Yoongi felt like he was home, like he was really, really home.

“Oh, Yoongi,” she said, her lips against his forehead. “Oh, baby. I'm sorry. I didn't recognize you, I'm sorry, my rainbaby.”

“Mom, mom, mom—” Yoongi clutched at her, bared his teeth. “Mom. God, I missed you so much, I missed you. I'm sorry, I got—it was—”

“They came to take you home,” she said, and Yoongi stiffened. “I know, sweetheart. I know. I tried to tell you, I tried... But you were so happy, I didn't... And you never came home, and I was pregnant with Jihoon and I knew they came to take you home, I just wish... They'd let me say goodbye first.”

 _Aah,_ Yoongi thought as he breathed in her perfume, _flowerbomb,_ just like he remembered. _That was what Seokjin meant. It was all wrong. That was why._

“I'm home now,” he said, and she kissed his head.

“Are you though, my son?”

“Mom?”

Yoongi pulled back and she was looking down at him with such warmth and compassion. Yoongi felt laid bare before her eyes and nothing had changed. Min Jieun was his mother and nothing had changed.

“You know you belong there,” she said. “I'm just—just so glad you came to say goodbye, sweetheart. I'm so glad you came home to say goodbye to me.”

“I'm not—no, Mom, that's not—”

“You should go home,” she whispered. “I love you so much, Yoongi. You are my son, always. But you don't belong here, and I won't—” she swallowed hard. “I won't be the reason you give up your wings.”

“Mom,” he choked out. “ _Mom._ ”

“Please, rainbaby,” she said, and Yoongi felt his resolve crumbling to pieces. “Please. Go home. Just promise you'll think of me, will you? When you touch this,” she put her fingers against the moonstone on his throat, the one he'd been wearing since the day after she'd found him under the bridge and taken him into her arms.

“Mom, I don't want to,” he said, and she smiled up at him, god, he was taller than her now, he had to stoop to be able to bury his head in her shoulder. “I don't want to leave you.”

“All babies leave their parents someday, sweetheart,” she said. “All birds fly away.”

“I can make you forget,” he said, his voice grating out like it was being clawed up his throat. “I can make you f-forget—”

“I don't want to forget you, Yoongi,” she said. “My first son, my precious rain fairy. I don't want to forget you and I never will, never again. I promise.”

“Mom. Mom please.”

“You should go,” she said, and Yoongi scrambled, felt his pockets for a trinket, anything he could give her, and pulled out a smooth blue stone. He'd pocketed it when he and Taehyung were walking in the garden, when he'd still worn his jeans, and he offered it out to her, small and worthless in his palm.

“Here,” he said, heart in his throat. “A kiss.”

She laughed, and Yoongi's heart relaxed.

“A kiss that lasts forever,” she replied, and he nodded, trying to smile before his face twisted back into sadness. “I love you, rainbaby.”

“Love you more,” he choked.

“I know.”

 

 


	12. homecoming

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> yoongi comes home.

When Min Jieun went out into the rain that night, she'd known something strange was going to happen. It wasn't that she was particularly sensitive to that type of thing, only that there was something heavy in the air, oppressive, and it wasn't just the storm overhead. As she walked through the street toward the grocer, she stopped and, for reasons even she couldn't divine, looked to her left.

There was a light. A tiny, bobbing blue light that seemed to call to her. She stepped out to follow it. She'd always been a curious girl and she'd grown into a curious woman, there was no need to stop and wonder why she was doing what she was. She just followed the little blue light until it led her to a bridge.

It led her to a bridge and beneath it was a baby. A dark-haired, pale-skinned baby, wrapped in a huge green and brown blanket and crying, _wailing,_ and she wondered how no one else could hear him.

She angled her umbrella and let herself get half-soaked as she picked up the child and cradled him close to her chest. “Shh,” she murmured, kissing his tiny head, unable to see the bleed of white hair to black, the change of blue eyes to brown. “Shh it's all right, it's all right little rainbaby. You're all right now.”

The baby hushed against her chest. Blinked up at her and babbled, almost smiled.

“Oh, there you go,” Jieun hummed, kissing his forehead. “There you go, rainbaby.” She returned home from the grocers without whatever she'd gone there for, the child taking up all the free space in her arms.

~

When Yoongi was three, a man came to the house.

A man in dark clothes with one dark eye, one light, and Jieun had blocked his way inside, bared her teeth and stood her ground between him and her son, playing in the living room. He'd laughed at her, though not cruelly.

“I am not here to take him away,” he said, and she squinted. “I'm here to negotiate the terms of his safety.”

“He seems safe enough without any of that,” she said, and he smiled.

“Only for now, Min Jieun. Please. Allow me to speak with you.”

Jieun let him in. She let him into the house and watched as he changed from a man with black hair in a black coat to a man in leathers, with wildly colored, beaded and braided hair, with a brilliant smile on his face. She watched Yoongi squeal in delight, getting up to toddle over to him, fisting his little hands in those braids and laughing. He was usually so nervous with strangers.

“Who are you,” she asked, and he turned to smile up at her from where he was lifting Yoongi up into his arms.

“I am Jiho,” he said. “I am the Oberon. And I am here to negotiate the terms of our prince's safety.”

“Prince,” Jieun said, feeling breathless. “Prince?”

“Yes,” he nodded, and the child giggled, reaching out for Jieun. “Our prince.”

“You... You could just take him,” she said, even though the idea wrenched her heart from her chest.

“No,” Jiho shook his head. “No, he is safer here. And he seems to adore you very much,” he nodded to where Yoongi was sucking at his thumb with his head on her shoulder. “I want only to make sure you are properly protected and cared for while he's with you.”

“Protected?”

“I can't promise there won't be others who find you,” Jiho said. “So. I will create for you a husband, a man to watch your house.”

“I can't be—I'm not _married,_ ” Jieun insisted.

“You don't have to be,” he said simply. “All of the world has bent itself around your little one,” he looked at Yoongi, now dozing. “There is not one person who will question that you suddenly have a husband, not one person who will realize that it is strange or unusual, just as it didn't confuse them that you suddenly had a son. I will create a husband. I will make sure he will be able to stay with you, after.”

“After?”

“After Yoongi goes home.” Jiho's face softened, and Jieun clutched her arms a little tighter around her son. “He will have to go back, Jieun. The world cannot maintain it's shape for much longer than his human childhood. The magic will grow too powerful and he will be taken away from this place, either by the force of an enemy or the hand of a friend.”

“How long do I have,” she whispered, and Jiho hummed.

“Perhaps... Fifteen more years? Give or take a few. By then the glamour that makes him appear human will all but vanish, and your safety along with it.

But don't worry. I will not allow you to be completely abandoned.”

~

Min Woohyuk was not a human, nor was he a faerie. Jiho had called him a halfling, though that wasn't correct, either.

“I won't stay in here with you,” he said, blushing awkwardly as he stood there just like he had been for the last ten minutes, while Yoongi tugged at his pant legs and babbled nonsensically. “I mean I won't—won't _force—_ ”

“You're so awkward,” Jieun complained, rubbing at her temples. “Stop it. Just come in. Set your things down, and at least pretend to be comfortable, would you please.”

Woohyuk did as he was told, at that moment. And every moment after. Despite herself Jieun found herself filled with more and more warm affection for him every day, as he learned to be human, learned to be human with her, and learned, most importantly, to be with her.

In the days after Yoongi was stolen away, Jieun wept into his chest and Woohyuk let her, smoothed down her hair and apologized over and over for something that was't his fault, that he couldn't have prevented. He promised that he loved her, that he would stay with her, and a week after Yoongi had been gone for a month, he took her to bed and she opened her legs for him to settle between them like she had so many times before.

Three months later Min Jieun, who had been told many times by many doctors that she was barren, was pregnant.

 _I will not allow you to be completely abandoned,_ Jiho had said that night. Jieun hadn't realized what he'd meant, then. She left peaches and rosebuds on the table the night she found out: came into the kitchen in the morning to find them eaten, with a necklace of rosegold and pearls left in exchange.

~

Jihoon was not Yoongi.

Jihoon was not Yoongi but he was her son, and Jieun adored him. She adored him and her husband, who took care of them both with all of his ability. Sometimes there were moments when Jieun felt like she'd forgotten something, but then Jihoon would appear in her arms, smiling and happy and she forgot that she'd forgotten, until that night on the front step. The boy in the hoodie, with white hair and wild eyes. The boy in the rain.

The rain boy.

The rainbaby.

Jieun had fled out into the night—she knew where he'd gone, she knew where she could find him, her son. She could have died, when he handed her that smooth blue stone, she could have screamed when he kissed her goodbye. She loved him, she loved him but he didn't belong here. He didn't belong in the human world and she had Jihoon, she had Woohyuk. She would tell Jihoon stories of his older brother, a boy he'd never met, and she would disguise them as faerie tales: the brave, brave faerie prince who left the home he knew and loved to save a world, to save the people he cared for. She wouldn't forget Yoongi again. Ever.

She watched him step back through the portal, clutched the stone to her chest and prayed for his safety, for his memory, that he knew she would always be with him in that pretty moonstone around his throat.

“Mom?” Jihoon asked, when she came back to the house. “Where'd you go?”

“Nowhere, sweetheart,” she cooed, lifting him up to sit on her hip even though he was too big for that, now.

“Mooom,” he complained, laughing as he hugged her around the neck. Jieun took a heavy breath and clutched him tight. Clung on to Woohyuk, when he took those steps closer to embrace them both.

~

Yoongi stepped back into the world and felt like he could breathe again. He hadn't realized it until he'd left the human world, but it had felt like slowly suffocating. Like the heavy weight of the air before thunder. He held his necklace in his hand and took a slow, deep breath. He needed to get back. He needed to get back, but he just wanted a moment—just a moment of peace to remember her, to remember Min Jieun, his mother, and how very much he loved her.

~

He found Hoseok and Taehyung, first.

The two of them were out in the field, chattering noisily and bickering as they sometimes did and for a moment Yoongi just enjoyed the sound. He just stood still and listened to their voices lace and tie and tangle until Hoseok shouted his name and Yoongi opened his eyes and remembered that this was not a dream. He was here, in this world, in _his_ world, with those he called his beloveds and his heart ached, his entire being _ached_ to be closer to them, to fist his hand in Taehyung's hair while Hoseok bit his neck and as he moved closer he could see Hoseok's eyes glinting, could see Taehyung opening his arms.

He fell between the two of them like a leaf fell in autumn. On top of Taehyung he breathed in the scent of his hair, looked into his dark eyes and saw the world inside of him that no one else seemed to be able to reach. He cupped his head and kissed him until he couldn't breathe, until his small wings were fluttering in pleasured distress and even then, when Taehyung was breathless and panting, warm skin and welcoming arms, Yoongi felt the world slowly tilting back into place, as it should have been.

Beneath Hoseok his neck was bitten, his quartermaster's savagery on display and he encouraged it, spread his legs further, bared more of his throat. _Mine,_ Hoseok snarled and _Yes,_ Yoongi agreed, tipping his head back onto Taehyung's bare thigh. He dug his claws into Hoseok's shoulders, ripped them down his back until there was blood to match his bruises, until Hoseok flipped him over and Yoongi had to get up on his hands to kiss Taehyung, to kiss his belly and his hip, his chest and his mouth, arms around his shoulders for balance, for strength. Strung between the two of them Yoongi felt like fire on a cold night: wanted, needed, desperately treasured.

In the field they lay nude in the sun, and Hoseok kissed his nose and Taehyung kissed his ear and whispered _welcome home_ and Yoongi could only reply, his hands wrapped in theirs, _I'm home._

~

Yoongi found Jeongguk in his garden, tending his flowers. He watched him for a silent moment before he flitted down and Jeongguk squeaked, smiled his hello and cocked his head when Yoongi made himself comfortable on a giant leaf, leaning back into it and spreading his legs.

“Sir?” he asked, and Yoongi laughed.

“What have I told you about calling me sir?”

Perhaps it was the shine of sweat on his bare chest, his nudity or the little smear of wetness already on his legs, but Jeongguk could not resist the need to climb on top of him, to push him down and slide inside of him, to kiss his bruised neck and lips, to moan gently as he was told _how good, so good, my sweet boy._ Jeongguk made love like it was the first time and Yoongi cradled him, hugged his body, kissed his slack mouth and the bridge of his nose when Jeongguk's hips stuttered and his wings flared out, fluttered like a heartbeat before he relaxed, his thighs tucked up under Yoongi's, their bare bodies wrapped up together in the leaves that had grown around them as Yoongi cried out his encouragements.

“I thought you'd never come back,” Jeongguk whispered, and Yoongi kissed his cheek, his hairline, the lids of his eyes. He laid back and let Jeongguk lay on top of him, his head resting over Yoongi's heart.

“I was never really gone,” he replied, and Jeongguk laugh-sniffled, rubbed his cheek into the bare skin of Yoongi's chest. “I'll never really leave you.”

“Do you promise?” Jeongguk asked, looking up through his dark hair and Yoongi reached to cup his face, to slip their lips and tongues together.

“I promise.”

~

Seokjin found Yoongi. Sitting in the back gardens, wrapped in a sheet of silk he found him asleep in the rosebush like he'd been there all night. The soft light of dark painted his skin pink and Seokjin bent to kiss his shoulder, to nudge their lips together as Yoongi made a sleepy noise and reached to wrap his arms around him.

“You're asleep,” Seokjin whispered, and smiled when Yoongi nodded, tucking his head into Seokjin's neck. “Would you like to sleep somewhere else, perhaps.”

“With you,” Yoongi murmured, nuzzling against Seokjin's throat, kissing the skin. “Wanna sleep with you.”

Seokjin carried Yoongi to his quarters. Locked his bedroom door and laid the prince down in his bedsheets, took in the sight of him: covered in bites, bruises and scratches, loved by some but not all. Seokjin kissed all the little marks, left his own in soft places where teeth had not yet left their impression, listened to the sound of Yoongi sighing, feeling him squirm under his lips. Turned him up onto hands and knees to taste him, to taste the others, to know that he was theirs, completely. His arm wrapped around Yoongi's neck and dragged him up as he rutted their bodies together, as he left bruises with his free hand on one hip.

“Ours,” he hissed into Yoongi's ear as he gasped for breath. “You're ours, princeling. _Ours._ ”

“Yes,” Yoongi panted, one hand reaching back to yank at Seokjin's hair, dragging his head forward to let him bite at the back of his neck, fisting up tight when he came, when his body trembled to accept more semen. “Yes, Seokjin, _yes._ ”

“I love you,” Seokjin whispered, laying Yoongi down into the bed, kissing the ring of bruise about his throat. “I know what it means, now. I love you.”

“I know,” Yoongi whispered, carding his fingers over Seokjin's shoulder, kissing the skin of his inner elbow. “You always have.”

~

In the library, Yoongi found Jimin and Namjoon.

The two of them curled up together in a large nest of blankets near the fireside, still smelling of sex as he knelt beside them and kissed their lips, their foreheads.

“Yoongi,” Jimin cried, dragging him into a kiss while Namjoon waited his turn, resting at Yoongi's back until the prince turned to face him, wrapped his arms around his neck and whispered that he was sorry, so sorry.

“Don't be,” Namjoon murmured, even as Yoongi pushed him back to the floor and got between his long legs. He tipped his head back when he felt Yoongi's girth sliding into the warmth and wetness Jimin had left behind not two hours before, gave a breathless laugh when Yoongi was pinned down by Jimin and given the same treatment. The weight of them against his pelvis should have been crushing but all he could think was that Yoongi was home, he was home with them, and he wouldn't leave again. “You came back,” he said, as Yoongi nodded into his throat while Jimin fucked him breathless and panting. “You came back, Yoongi.”

“I'm sorry,” Yoongi whispered, choking as his hair was yanked back and his neck arched, exposed to Namjoon's teeth. “Please,” he groaned, struggling to move between them. “Please, _please_.”

Namjoon felt Jimin cum. Knew from the growl in his throat and the snap of his hips and heard the slick pull-out. Felt Yoongi's girth slip out of his body while Jimin manhandled him up onto Namjoons hips and lowered him down onto his cock where he helplessly tried to move, exhausted. Namjoon sat up, wrapped his arms around Yoongi's trembling torso and whispered against his lips.

“When I told you,” he said. “When I told you. I thought you'd leave. I thought you'd leave and never come back, Yoongi.”

“Never,” Yoongi whispered, whimpering as Jimin's hand wrapped around his length and stroked. “Never, Namjoon, I love you, I love you so much—Jimin I—oh—” Namjoon felt him start to slip away, to fall into the sleep of the well-loved, and he eased him back onto the nest, fucked him shallow while Jimin bit his back until his cum, too, joined the others. Still buried inside of him Namjoon tucked their bodies down into the blankets, and he slept. Slowly, one by one, the others joined them. Jeongguk tucked tight against Jimin, Taehyung laying near their heads with his fingers wrapped in Seokjins, who spooned against Hoseok.

When Yoongi woke it was to the safety and comfort of those most beloved to him surrounding him. The weight of the moonstone around his throat was a heavy one but the warmth of Namjoon's body, the smell of Taehyung's hair and the comfort of Jimin's strong arm around his waist, they were more than worth the trade. The span of Jeongguk's wings, the taste of Seokjin's smile, the rumble of Hoseok's grinning snarl into his neck. Nothing could be worth more.

Nothing.

~

In the crackle of the firelight, Jiho pressed his hand to his heart and whispered a prayer to the sun, that she would watch over them, these seven very, very special boys. Particularly Min Yoongi, particularly the prince with white and blue hair, with pale skin and lips the color of a primrose bud. Particularly his son, who would one day take up his helm as the Oberon himself, with trusted advisors and guides at his side.

“What are you thinking about,” Jaehyo asked as Jiho stepped through the shadows into the room he shared with them—his advisors. His guides, his most beloved.

“Nothing,” he murmured, shedding his clothes and climbing into the bed between Jaehyo's long and lithe form and Minho's stockier, warmer body. “Nothing, dearest. Get some sleep.” Across the bed, Kyung made a soft sound in his sleep and as Jiho felt Jaehyo relax, felt the room settle into quiet:

“Goodnight, my loves.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> uwah i'm the worst at finishing things, this feels so _cheap_... but maybe i will add little omakes, as i am known to do. it does't feel like the story is finished at all, does it?  
>  thank you all so much for your support on this fic. it's very important to me and i'm so glad you all enjoyed it.   
> you're the best.


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